School in need of help
The National, Monday February 17th, 2014
By MIRIAM MALAWA
A PRE-SCHOOL located at Tokarara in the National Capital District is desperately in need of building materials and teaching and student resources.
Marinae Pre-school has enrolled underprivileged children for free from the streets since its inception in 2011, with an open shelter as a classroom and partitions separating the kindergarten from preschooler.
The school has no teaching materials and three staff members teaching on a voluntary basis.
In 2012 the school had experienced an increase in the number of students enrolled and it is striving for funding and building materials to cater for the increase.
The school was a community initiative under the Community Transformation Centre (CTC) that enrolls children at age three and above.
It was the dream of a couple who had seen the need of giving a chance to the less fortunate children and in teaching them Christian principles.
The belief that Thomas Marinae and wife Philomena had in raising children as early as three with Christian principles has driven them to go out of their way to fund the school with the help of donors such as We Care Foundation and Desmond Yeninen.
Marinae said it was hard running the school, especially when teachers came and went as they were not paid but through the grace of God the school had managed to open its doors for this year.
He said they now charged a project fee of K60 for those parents who enroll their child there as there was a need for more teaching materials.
“But we have received help from We Care Foundation which donated K4,000 for new toilet blocks and donated uniforms and Yeninen paid our teachers out of his pocket,” Marinae said.
He said their teachers received training which was mostly facilitated by We Care Foundation and Digicel Foundation.
He said the school hopes to educate less fortunate children without giving burden to their parents.
“We hope that kind hearted people will come along and support us. It’s very important to educate a child on Christian principles at an early age as this helps a lot,” he said.