There is no escaping the hardships that school children in remote rural areas of Africa must endure but in spite of these hardships, a boundless school spirit burns brightly, and enthusiasm rings louder than the steel gong that brings an end to the day.

To help these students and their teachers in Zimbabwe, Grand Circle Foundation has funded scholarships and the purchase of desks and chairs, steel shelving for the library and metal storage cabinets for the classrooms, new smokeless cooking pots for the kitchen and of course thousands of books at the Ngamo Primary School.

We’ve also refurbished the classrooms and painted both the interior and exterior of the school along with planting fruit trees and vegetable plants in the garden.

We installed a solar-powered pump at the existing borehole to reduce dependence on often unreliable electricity and installed water storage tanks and piping to the school to provide both drinking water and irrigation for the garden.

And of course, since it isn’t always just about studying, we built a playground and purchased soccer uniforms.