GNA – Pencils of Promise (POP), an education-focused non-profit organization, has commissioned a three-unit classroom block with office and store for Avegorme Community Baptist Primary School in the South Tongu District of the Volta region.
The organization built the facility in collaboration with Marie-Vivian Dogbe Foundation to help address infrastructural challenges bedevilling the school.
The edifice has ancillary facilities, including a six-unit water closet and a four-unit urinal and would be occupied by kindergarten and primary one pupils.
The organisation also donated to the school, 21 and 13 kindergarten tables and chairs, 70 dual desks as well as teachers’ tables and chairs.
Mr Freeman Gobah, the Country Director, POP, said the facility was the eleventh the organisation had built in the South Tongu District and was optimistic a similar gesture would be extended to other schools at the appropriate time.
The Country Director said the organisation had built 187 educational infrastructure across three regions and provided 90 schools with sanitation and wash facilities for the past nine years.
He said 1,000 teachers from 100 schools were also being supported in various ways to improve their teaching skills to deliver quality education to the pupils.
Mr Gobah said the organisation’s e-reader programme was currently being run in 89 schools while more than 9, 500 electronic readers with 100 books on each of them were deployed to support teaching and learning.
He commended the Marie-Vivian Dogbe Foundation for their role in the realisation of the edifice and charged members of the community to develop interest and participate in community development projects.
Mr Thomas Tsatsu, Headteacher of the school, expressed appreciation to POP and Marie-Vivian Dogbe Foundation for their support.
He said the school, which was built in 1996, had not seen any renovation or additional facilities and this had posed a great challenge to their quest to deliver effective academic work as the environment was not conducive due to poor infrastructure.
Mr Tsatsu said the facility would help enhance teaching and learning in the school and appealed to individuals, benevolent organisations and philanthropists to support the school in similar ways to improve academic work.
Mr Woelinam Dogbe, President of Marie-Vivian Dogbe Foundation, asked school authorities to ensure that the facility was put to good use and properly maintained.
Mrs Evelyn Araba-Zentey, the District Director of Education, commended POP and the Foundation for the gesture and appealed for more of such facilities to be extended to schools with similar problems.
Mr Kwabla Mensah Woyome, Member of Parliament for the area, called on indigenes, both home and abroad, to help to address, especially education infrastructural deficits in the area.
He said the government alone could not deal with all the challenges in the educational sector, hence the need for citizens to rise and support infrastructural challenges.
GNA