A long-standing partnership between the Friends of Hope Foundation and Stephenson Primary School continues to bring joy to learners, encouraging them to look forward to school every day.

The Friends of Hope Foundation partnered with Chic Mamas Do Care and Post Tensioning & Structural Solutions (Pty) Ltd (PTS-S) to embark on a project aiming to revamp the school for their shared love and value of ensuring growth, development, empowerment and impact in communities in childhood development.

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Through their work, they have upgraded the bathrooms at the school, levelled the ground, built a lunch area with shade, added a playground with jungle gyms, started a garden and added ceilings to the classrooms. Their most recent project involved improving the classrooms internally by adding flooring to ensure stability and installing insulation to assist with the hot weather.

Friends of Hope Foundation founder Holly Singh said all their initiatives must be sustainable so they can create a continuous cycle of development and impact for learners and the wider community. “With the garden and the shed, learners can sit there and enjoy the shed, but are also taught how to garden. The harvest from their planted vegetables can be cooked and used to feed the children, and when it grows even bigger, they can start selling to the community. That way, the cycle of sustainability continues,” said Singh.

She further explained what the most rewarding part of the partnership is. “It’s so amazing, knowing that you are making a change, witnessing the change in the school every time I come, and when the learners run and hug me screaming, ‘Thank you so much for the jungle gym, we love it’. The joy on their faces is everything. It just reminds us that community and unity is beautiful and powerful and a bigger difference and impact is made,” she said.

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Stephenson Primary School principal Jean Kadungure explained the difference in the learners’ attitude and how the school was prior to the revamp. “Last year they fixed up the classes. They were made with the material used in Wendy houses without dry-walling, so when it was hot it was very hot for the learners, and very cold during the winter. Now, it’s cooler in classes.

Learners even come to school early now and don’t want to go home. You can see on their faces that they are happy to be at school, not just inside the classrooms, but because they have something to do even outside the school. We are very grateful to the Friends of Hope Foundation, PTS-S and Chic Mamas,” said Kadungure.

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