Success Story: Mohammed

Blue Nile State, Damazine locality

How does it feel like to be in a school without a fence and no electricity and still you love this school and want continue staying in it; you or I would have certainly said “How come, this is anything, but school”. This is the condition of El Nour Basic School in Blue Nile State at Dmazine locality, but still you would see smiley and ambitious faces.

At that beginning of this school year 2013 the students found two fully furnished classrooms and a teacher office were built during the summer vacation, but since all students live around of course they have seen the construction work going on and everyone deep inside wished to be the luckiest and have the right to use the new classrooms.

Since the headmistress believes that grade 8 is a critical year, where students are getting ready to move into high school, she decided to give them one of the newly established classrooms to ensure that students are properly well prepared. Mohamed 16 years old is a grade 8 student who I met and he was lucky enough to have an access to the newly established classroom.

Mohamed thoroughly described his previous classrooms where all were made of local materials that allows water to come in during fall time and it is another story at summer and winter time “throughout the year either it is wet, hot or cold classroom where we hardly focus to the lessons, the class might finish without us paying attention that it is already finished” and despite the rain the student come to school because the headmistress was encouraging them to continue studying and sometimes the students used to bring empty sacks from their own home to cover the rooftop of the classroom so they can continue their classes without the disturbance of the rain drops. It was interesting to hear from his own mouth that some students used to sit in bricks or bring their own seats from home “the education was a misery, throughout my life this is the only school I know and last year I thought of moving out and enroll myself in another school where my classes are no longer interrupted because of rains”.

“With the newly established classrooms the school becomes more attractive for students and their parents as well, and I had to apologize to some parents that I can’t register their children because the school is occupied now. Parents are happy and teachers are comfortable. Now I can say I am working in a real school” said the headmistress.

Mohamed isn’t just a student, but an active member in his community, he established a planting project for the neighbourhood with two of his friends and it requires him a daily watering for the tress and pots, but it makes him happy to see the neighbourhood turns into green.

Mohamed wished for his other school students to have same classrooms like his class “I want my school to look much better, nicer, and we get more spaces for school activities”.

Through the sida fund, Save the Children education programme in Blue Nile aims at increasing access and quality of education and learning experience for pre-school and basic school for 1190 and this include the provision of permanent and temporary classrooms, teachers’ offices, leaning and teaching materials, seating and teacher trainings.