Thursday, February 10, 2011

Photo Session

Last Monday, on February 7, 2011, the doors to standard one classroom opened officially and our graduants from Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska Pre-School crossed the threshold of the classroom for the very first time. This marked the actual opening of our Blessed Edmund Bojanowski Primary School in Kiabakari. A genuine milestone and hallmark in my life and struggle to make the dream, the vision of Divine Mercy embracing the whole human person right here in Kiabakari, on the Divine Mercy Hill and around it - come true...

Since things have calmed down after graduation day and the opening of the standard one, I can finalize cards for children under the program of educational adoption of my Foundation Kiabakari by taking pictures of all children involved and placing them in their respective cards, ready to be shipped out to our sponsors. My camera is ready and right after posting this entry I will go to the pre-school and later to the standard one kids for the photo session. It's going to be blast!

This program has been well received by people of good will all over the world and is slowly picking up its pace with now around 30 children in the scheme. The idea is to have every child involved in this program so to avoid painful rises in school fees at the pace of inflation and rising costs of living in Tanzania. This program, as I see it, is kind of a brake that we apply so the sisters running our schools can have extra funding outside the modest school fees paid by the parents and guardians of our children. Otherwise, I am afraid, sooner than later, those who will not afford the rise in school fees every now and then, will start to take their kids off the school and the whole idea of providing quality education for bargain basement price tag right here in the local community will be a huge failure.

So it is extremely important to spread the word about us and the program and involve as many families and private sponsor who will make sure that we continue to give our children from underprivileged rural families a quality education for as little as possible. 

Another issue is that - as with every administrator or owner of any educational facility - there is a habitual temptation to make as much money as possible out of the school. The temptation to raise school fees and introduce other payments for various sorts of reason is always there. So, my sisters are no exemption. They want to make money and send them back to their headquarters in Kasisi, Lusaka, Zambia. It is understandable as they must ensure the congregation runs itself from their own sweat. But! I am not on sisters' side. I am with my people I love and serve, thus I want my foundation to act as a braking mechanism to slow down the process of increasing payments in my schools! That is why I devised educational adoption program to do so.

If you happen to read this post, please give this idea a thought. Maybe you too are called to come to our aid? If so, contact me via comments to this post or by email adopcja@kiabakari.org or find me on Facebook where you can see some nice pictures regarding this program.

Here below are the links to my previous posts dealing with the same topic, so I do not repeat myself.





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