A girl lays head to foot with one of her classmates in a tiny twin bed. She wakes up a bit before dawn so she can bathe from a bucket of water outside without anyone seeing her. When school starts for the day, she sits on the ground in a chicken run and listens to the teacher’s lesson. At lunchtime, she gets her food and finds a space in the corridor to quickly eat. When it comes time to study, she doesn’t have a book of her own. She shares one of the few books in the school with 500 other students.
When Zambia gained their independence in 1964, most mission schools were taken over by the government. But, over the years, the government failed to keep up with maintenance and administration, creating many run-down schools in desperate need of upgrading.
In 2017, the Zambian government offered many of the unkept mission schools back to the hands of the church and congregations such as the Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (OP).
The Dominican sisters accepted the call to serve the poor, rural community in the Diocese of Mansa, Zambia. But, they were unaware of the desperate conditions of Kabunda Girls' Secondary School, until they saw it with their own eyes.
With 530 girls and only 300 beds, overcrowded dormitories and unkept facilities were the sad reality for girls who lived at the school. Clothes hung from rafters of dormitory roofs with no ceiling boards. One single washroom caused many girls to wash outdoors from a bucket and crowded facilities meant they ate and learned outside, too, attending classes under a nearby tree or on the dirt ground.
In 2017, three Dominican Sisters were assigned to run Kabunda School, which they renamed as Holy Trinity Girls Secondary School. The sisters worried about the school’s conditions, about the dignity of the girls and their hygiene.
“What kind of school did we accept?” they asked each other many times.
Every building on the grounds was in desperate need of renovation. But the sisters knew that God had a purpose for calling them to serve at this particular school. So, although they had a lot of work to do, the sisters got started right away.
Sr. Christine Mwape was one of the three nuns assigned to the school after recently completing training workshops through the Sisters Leadership Development Initiative (SLDI), a program offered through African Sisters Education Collaborative (ASEC). In SLDI, she studied Administration and learned skills like resource mobilization and grant writing in three one-month workshops that took place over a three year period. The skills that Sr. Christine learned in SLDI proved to be invaluable to improving the lives of girls of Holy Trinity.
She started to send emails and network with anyone she could think of that may be able to help turn the school around. In the first year, donations began to come in for water reticulation and to purchase textbooks and kitchen supplies.
In April, 2019, Sr. Christine travelled to Germany to raise funds for the school's most urgent needs: the construction of two dormitories and renovations of the existing run-down buildings. She gained the interest of a funder and was able to secure a grant to cover the costs of the construction and renovation projects. In addition to the construction of two dormitories, the grant also paid for the dormitory furnishings (beds, mattresses, tables, etc.) and a computer laboratory for the girls.
This donation acquired by Sr. Christine has changed the face of Holy Trinity Girls Secondary School and enhanced the learning and living environment for the girls enrolled at this school.
Sr. Christine thanks ASEC for sharpening her resource mobilization skills. She said that SLDI has helped very much her mission work. Armed with newfound confidence, she's now seeking funds for two more important projects in rural Zambia: a kitchen/dining hall at the girls’ school and the construction of the first ever boys secondary school to be run by the Dominican Sisters.
Give the Gift of Education to a Catholic Sister
Thanks to the Dominican Sisters, Holy Trinity Girls Secondary School is a place where students can live comfortable and flourish in their studies. But it wasn't always this way. Getting her own education and learning resource mobilization and project proposal writing skills were the key to Sr. Christine's success in improving the dire conditions at a girls’ boarding school in Zambia.
Armed with an education, Catholic nuns just like Sr. Christine, are able to tackle the challenges facing their African communities and become effective leaders. Give a sister the gift of education by donating to African Sisters Education Collaborative (ASEC) today. You can read more about this project and learn more about ASEC's programs at asec-sldi.org.