Today was our second visit to The Davis Moon Project School in Arbegona. Since Saturday is a leisure day there were only 100 students around the school instead of 800. As joyful as it is to have all of the students it can be a little hard to get work done around the school with an extra 1600 pairs of hands. The children LOVE to help out, so the few children that were around the school we put them to work!
Hayley and a few of the teachers and students organized the library. When we arrived it was apparent the books were being used, but proper storage of them had not yet been understood. All the books were pulled from the shelves and sorted by levels. The teachers were instructed on the levels so that they can assist students in selecting a book that would be age appropriate. It was a daunting task, but in the end the library looks amazing and the teachers are very proud of the work.
We bought a few cleaning materials for the school and Sonja taught the students how to clean the rooms. We feel it is an important task to teach the children so that they take even more pride in their school. Sonja shared a funny story that when they began cleaning the children quickly swept around all the desks and then exclaimed that they were done! Pretty typical for children even in the states J She showed them how to move all the desks out so that the entire room would be swept. They quickly caught on all 8 rooms were very clean!
Holden, Collin and I began painting on the wall of the school while the others were organizing and cleaning. We thought it was important to paint the name of the school on the building. This way giving the students and the community identity. We painted, “Kadara Davis Moon School” right in the center. We had an audience the entire time watching our every stroke, so the pressure was on. We also painted a tree symbolizing, “education is the root of success”. To the right of the school name we painted the alphabet. It was such a fun project! On Monday we will be painting another building, but this time we are leaving it up to the school children on what to paint or what they would like to see on their classroom building. I am a little nervous of their selection and my painting skills. 🙂
All in all it was a true work day and we were exhausted. We also learned a daunting fact about the school while out today. The
school head master shared that 330 of the almost 1,000 students are orphans that do not have either parent. We knew the school served a large portion of orphan children, but we did not know that this included nearly a 3rd of the school. This leads us to our top priority and that is school uniforms for the children. The children wear their uniform EVERY SINGLE DAY. For nearly every student it is the only pair of clothes they own. We want to ensure that every child has clothes to wear that goes to the school!