This video clip has just come through from our partner NGO in Cameroon. The primary school is in the Far North region. It collapsed on top of the children studying inside. Details are still coming through but we are hoping that we will be able to help this community...
We will shortly be undertaking a new project, based in the North West and West regions, addressing the needs of many school aged children who are deprived of education because of war and are at risk of exploitation. Around 2,500 schools remain closed after seven...
Earlier this year the village of Peere in Mayo Linwa, Adamawa Region, was struck by high winds which tore the roof off the only classroom at their primary school. The walls of the classroom, made from mud blocks, soon collapsed in the rains. The parents of the 361...
Our biggest ever school project was finally completed and handed over to the community of Ntahkeka in Bamenda II on 30th May 2024. It was a day of great excitement and celebration. This had been an audacious project from the start and it faced many difficulties...
In April of this year, a small team from Main Road Films made their way out to Bamenda to capture some footage of the celebrations at the new school at St. Paul's Ntahkeka. They met with staff, pupils and people from the local community: speeches were made, children...
We are SO CLOSE to our 100th school project now .. we can hardly believe it. Thanks to the Ken Hughes Foundation, we have been able to send out the funds to construct 3 classrooms, an office and a new latrine at EP Bake in the West Region, where many of the Internally...
Huge thanks are due to Kevin Dundas at Willmott Dixon for organising this year's football tournament, with teams taking part from their various suppliers. This is the second such tournament and it looks as though they will have raised around £600 for BSFA (almost...
... but they are so essential!! A new Ventilated Improved Pit Latrine at a school makes all the difference to the health, well-being and confidence of children - and it means that girls can continue going to school after they reach puberty, when otherwise they might...
It's very exciting. We are getting close to 100 new school buildings funded since Building Schools for Africa started working with SHUMAS Cameroon in 2007. This little primary school, called Ecole Publique Bamendou Chefferie is located in Penka Michel sub-division...
Can you help Andrew Hindle and his family as they make their final dash towards their fundraising target of £16,750? They are fundraising for 2 classrooms with all necessary furniture, an office and a new latrine to be built at the little bilingual primary school at...
We were delighted recently to have been able to send funds to our partner in Cameroon which will enable the construction of two more really worthwhile projects. Three classrooms with all necessary furniture, an office/store, a new latrine and a borehole for clean...
Following on from their successful fundraising football tournament last year, our supporters at Willmott Dixon are holding another - this time in Birmingham. If you are a football fan and live anywhere near Birmingham, do go along and support this event. It will be a...
Amelie and Fraser Hindle have often featured on our fundraising posts over the past few years. They are big supporters of BSFA. In fact, the whole Hindle family have been amazing at fundraising for us. They have already funded two school building projects through us...
Sometimes things get overlooked don't they? It's the end of April and we have only just realised that we didn't post a link to our most recent Newsletter.... the Christmas one! Oops. We hope you enjoy reading it. December 18 newsletter
The new block of classrooms at Ecole Publique St. Barthelemy have been finished in record time.... and just before the rain pours down by the look of the photo. All the building materials can now be cleared away to be used on our next project - then the 205 children...
It was really good to see an article printed by the Chartered Institute of Building in their magazine, giving our charity a very nice plug. The article, below, is referring to the Sunesis initiative called A School for a School, where the company funds the...
These little tots used to have to sit on the floor of their school room, or on a concrete block or a rock. There were no tables for them to work at and no facilities at all, other than the teachers. Thanks to our supporters at Sunesis, the children now have new...
We are delighted to announce that the little bilingual primary school, GBPS Sodiko, will shortly be benefitting from three new classrooms, an office and a new latrine. The school is currently being held in a borrowed house that has been divided up with plywood sheets...
All the trustees of Building Schools for Africa would like to thank the Dragon School in Oxfordshire for their splendid donation of over £235. This will buy 10 benches for primary school children - which will mean 30 of these children will no longer either have to...
The children at this little primary school, CS Batoke in Limbe, can hardly believe their eyes as they see their new school taking shape. Up until now they have been studying in a ramshackle wooden construction with gaping holes in the plank walls and a leaky roof:...
There is a little bilingual nursery school at Akok-Ndoe, on the outskirts of the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde. The school is ironically called the Marvellous nursery school, however its facilities are far from marvellous. The school has no building, so it has...
There is cholera in Cameroon at the moment - and we are doing all we can to help reduce the spread of this dreadful disease. Clean drinking water and good sanitation are key to preventing cholera from spreading. Last year we funded a new block of classrooms at Ecole...
We are so pleased to be able to announce that this little primary school in the south of Cameroon will soon have three new purpose-built classrooms (to replace those in the picture), an office and a new latrine with hand-washing facilities. This will make such a...
We are delighted to announce that the wonderful group of supporters from Market Makers and Really B2B have survived their charity walk. It took a total of 20 hours to get around the Isle of Wight last weekend, in the rain, wind and cold - but their spirits never...
It has hardly rained at all for months and months here on the Isle of Wight, where Building Schools for Africa is based .... until today, that is. Suddenly it is distinctly autumnal - cold, windy and raining - and yet this plucky bunch from Market Makers and Really...
For the past three months, a pilot scheme has been running in the remote village of Buh in the NW Region, bringing solar powered light to households in the village, and a little extra money to the entrepreneurs who are trying this business project, introduced by...
The Hindle family are on a mission to raise sufficient funds to build a THIRD school through BSFA. This summer they organised a four-day relay marathon, with participants running the length of Offa's Dyke - a magnificent effort in anyone's book - and they followed...
Thanks go to our wonderful supporters at Clymac who funded the construction of a new classroom block at the technical secondary school Banock, which was opened this week. This was a wonderful example of participatory development in action. The whole community got...
THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! To Kevin Dundas from Sunesis (first on the left in the back row) and all these fellas who work for Sunesis suppliers. They obviously had a great time taking part in a fabulous fundraising football tournament, organised by Kevin, to raise...
Another small school will soon be celebrating the news that their pupils will be able to learn in brand new classrooms by the end of this year. Currently, the classrooms at St. Therese Nursery and Primary school in Muyuka in SW Region are made from roughly sawn...
Our fantastic supporters at Sunesis are raising funds for our charity by organising a friendly football tournament for their supply chain on 22nd May. The venue is yet to be confirmed .... will it be Wembley?? Football 22nd May
On the 15th February 2018 the British High Commissioner for Cameroon, Rowan Laxton, and the British Minister of State for Africa, Harriet Baldwin, visited our newly opened science lab at GBHS Sodiko, in the company of Billian Nyuykighan, the Programme Co-ordinator for...
Thanks to generous funding from our regular supporters at Clymac, three new classrooms and a latrine are under construction at CETIC Banock - a technical secondary school in the West Region. The number of pupils at this school is growing rapidly and the community has...
GBHS Sodiko not only received the new science block building but it came fully equipped and ready for the students to get to work with their practical experiments. Clean drinking water was also supplied at this school, and we are expecting that, in the months to...
We are delighted to be able to report that the new science lab at GBHS Sodiko was opened today (8th February 2018). This bilingual high school is in the Douala sub-division of Littoral Region and, up until today, all the students studying science in the fifth and...
The school community in the poor little village of Bapes Mondial (Centre Region) has been struggling for months and months to get their local contributions together so that we can help them build 3 new classrooms, an office and a latrine, to replace their current...
"Life in Kalong will never be the same again!" This was the message we received from the Director of SHUMAS on the day that he handed over the keys to a block of 3 new classrooms, an office and a new latrine at Kalong primary school. Ever since the school was...
Our heartfelt thanks go to the students at Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts who have been fundraising to support our projects since 2009. They have just sent us sufficient funds to pay for the borehole which will provide clean drinking water for the...
This will be a real TEAM effort from Thursday June 28th to Sunday July 1st 2018. Although at least two of the runners at this event will run the whole 180 miles, it is being organised as a Relay Run so as to include as many enthusiastic supporters as possible. The...
Our amazing supporter, Andrew Hindle, is really going the extra mile this year to raise sufficient funds to construct his THIRD school building through our charity! A couple of Andrew's friends are planning on running the length of Offa's Dyke (that's 180 miles!)...
It's great to have Kevin Dundas as one of our enthusiastic supporters. Kevin keeps his colleagues at Sunesis updated with all the work they are doing with Building Schools for Africa through his blog and a short video he made about our work. We can't wait for him to...
We were so pleased this week to receive a wonderful donation of almost £250 from North Walsham High School. Our charity was chosen by the Head Girl and Head Boy to benefit from the money the school raised through their non-uniform day at the end of last term. Thanks...
We are so pleased to have been able to send our partner NGO, SHUMAS, the funds for two more school projects this week. Building will start straight away on 3 classrooms, an office and a new latrine at the primary schools in two villages in the Centre Region, Bapes...
Andrew Hindle is raising funds for a third school in Cameroon - and his whole family is on board supporting him. They are simply amazing - and we love it that they are such ardent supporters of ours. The fundraising has been going on for some time already and, in...
Keep up to date with all that's been going on at Building Schools for Africa in the past few months. Our latest newsletter has some initial findings from our 10-year Impact Assessment - which are all very encouraging and, we hope, interesting to our supporters....
A couple of modest donations that have come in to the charity lately are really going to make all the difference to the life chances of some children in Cameroon. Many young children are prevented from going to primary school because their parents are too poor to...
Two of the very remote primary schools that we supported with 6 classrooms apiece back in 2010, the Islamic school IPS Bamdzeng and the Baptist school CBC Bamdzeng, now have the benefit of electricity - thanks to a renewable energy project undertaken by SHUMAS with...
Despite all the setbacks to progress caused by the civil unrest in Cameroon in recent months, the SHUMAS team has been able to get these classrooms at GSS Ichim built and almost ready for handover to the community. BSFA trustees are looking forward to making a visit...
Another primary school is about to be constructed in the South Region, thanks to our wonderful supporters at Clymac. Ecole Publique d'Edjom will soon have three new classrooms complete with blackboards, benches, tables and chairs, an office and a new VIP latrine -...
Ecole Publique Bape Mondial is one of the primary schools that has recently applied for help from the SHUMAS/Building Schools for Africa partnership. Around 200 children have been studying in these makeshift classrooms since the school was created in 2012. Imagine the...
We have just received details of the impact of a water project that was funded by our supporters Market Makers. The picture above shows us tasting the water at the opening of this project in April 2016. The Mubang/Menke water project is based in the suburbs of...
Before we were able to find the funding for this project, the people from the Upper Munjong area in NW region were having to drink water from local streams which were also being used for washing clothes and motorbikes and had household waste dumped in them. Grazing...
This is the newly refurbished and equipped health centre at Wainamah in the NW region, which was handed over to the community on April 26th 2017. The pictures below show what the facilities were like before. The health centre treats over 7,000 patients each year...
We have just learned that our brilliant supporters at Market Makers in Portsmouth are encouraging their staff to take part in the Three Peaks Challenge in the Yorkshire Dales this June. They will be raising funds to help build quality classrooms at the High School...
This building, under construction now in the village of Ichim-Oku, NW Region, will be the new secondary school, GSS Ichim. It is our first collaborative project with Rotary International Canada and came about because we met members of this group over breakfast in...
This is the new primary school at GS Nketisoh - just waiting for its final coat of paint and its official handover to the community. It will transform this village community who were struggling to provide any kind of building for the school when we first visited it...
The community of Upper Munjong in the NW region have desperate for a reliable source of clean drinking water for many years. Families have tended to dig wells but they were never deep enough for the water to be clean. With aid from some foreign investors, some new...
The Gered Gereedschap Foundation in the Netherlands generously donated to SHUMAS a container full of the most enormous number of reconditioned tools and equipment, for use in many of technical schools that SHUMAS has constructed, including five that were funded...
It's just great when one of our satisfied funders inspires someone else to come on board with us. This recently happened, and a generous new funder, who had been inspired by Positech's funding of the little school at Salle in the East Region, contacted us and said "I...
Huge thanks are due to Felicity Dorey who, with her dad, took part in a Triathlon last September and raised the fantastic sum of £470 for us. What a brilliant effort. Felicity says that she had been really inspired by the projects that we have managed to fund and...
For the first time in our ten years of working in partnership with SHUMAS, we have had to postpone a planned trip to open school buildings in Cameroon. We are disappointed but not downhearted - and we hope to be re-scheduling the trip for later in the Spring. There...
These two sets of brand new football kit are the latest items destined to be squeezed into our luggage for our trip to SHUMAS next week. BSFA's new supporter, Sunesis, has been receiving lots of offers of support from its suppliers and it's going to make the handing...
We hope you have all enjoyed a happy and peaceful Christmas. We hope you enjoy reading our latest newsletter, which is accessible if you click on the link below christmas_newsletter_2016_december All the trustees of Building Schools for Africa would like to wish you...
Imagine our delight recently when we were totting up our total funds raised to date , ready for our 10th anniversary review of Building Schools for Africa, and realised that we had just tipped over the £2 million mark!!! It is absolutely AMAZING and it's all thanks to...
Following our really mild autumn, the weather turned REALLY cold in mid-November just in time for our visit from Stephen Ndzerem and Billian Nyuykighan from SHUMAS. Fortunately, it didn't deter them and they spent three weeks travelling around the country, meeting...
We are going to have heavy bags when we travel out to Cameroon in January for the opening of GS Nketisoh! The new school building at this impoverished primary school has been funded by Sunesis and, in order to really give the children a head start, some of their...
Sometimes it takes a long time for our school building projects to reach completion and be ready to hand over to the village communities ... but we get there in the end, thanks to the determination of the SHUMAS expert workers! Three more schools in the villages of...
Amelie Hindle is obviously a fan of the Great British Bake Off .... she must have spent most of September baking in readiness for her Grand Afternoon Charity Tea Party which raised a staggering £1000!! The whole family pitched in to help, with Amelie's grandma making...
The Lycée de Mogon has finally opened its two new classrooms - thanks to our wonderful supporters, the Gompels family. This is one of four schools in the Extreme North region that are currently having new classrooms constructed. The school has also benefitted from a...
The construction of our school projects in the Extreme North region can be slow-going at times!! There is currently terrible flooding of the all the roads leading to our project at CES Dama in the Mayo Danay Division, so SHUMAS staff who were monitoring the building...
Our brilliant supporters at the Portsmouth companies of Market Makers and Lead Forensics are well underway with their fundraising for our charity for this year. The plan is to build blocks of classrooms at two schools in the NW Region - GS Kungoh (a primary school...
Two young students, Henry Gardner-Roberts and Ed Gripper, recently got in touch with us to say they were going to trek the length of the River Thames - from its source right down to the Thames Barrier - to raise some funds for our projects. And now they have done...
On one of the hottest days so far this year, our plucky supporters from Bamboo Crowd decided to get dressed up in Panda suits as part of their attempt to raise £1000 for us. They are such a great crowd and are already over half-way towards their target. Thanks...
Andrew (with the mike above) and Linda Hindle and their two young children, Amelie and Fraser, are - quite simply - Superstars!! They have started fundraising again for a third school building project through BSFA/SHUMAS - and this month the children took the lead...
We are thrilled to welcome another company on board! SUNESIS is supporting Building Schools for Africa and SHUMAS in our attempt to help as many Cameroonian children as possible to go to school in clean, hygienic, weatherproof classrooms. They have started a new...
We recently received a wonderful donation from a primary school pupil from Ripon.Hamish took part in a 'Fiver Challenge' - he spent his fiver on seeds and set up a gardening business, weeding and planting at the gardens of friends and neighbours and also sold flowers...
We are pleased to publish our latest newsletter, which you can download and print if you wish. It has been a really busy year to date, with lots of new classroom blocks at schools being opened and clean drinking water provided to communities that have never before...
The pupils in Year 6 at Brighstone Primary School are really enjoying working in their brand new classroom - and were concerned to see how children have to put up with terrible conditions at many schools in Cameroon. They decided to raise some money for BSFA and...
The pupils at Caistor Grammar School decided to donate the money they raised earlier this year to Building Schools for Africa. We were delighted, needless to say! It may not sound very glamorous but their fundraising has paid for the construction of the new VIP...
We had a lovely surprise in April - a cheque for over £100 from The Snaith School in East Yorkshire! The girls at this secondary school decided that they would like to help children in Africa get a better education, so they organised a bake sale which raised this...
A group of eight students and two teachers from Robert Gordon's College are making the stupendous effort of cycling from Land's End to John o'Groats to raise the money to build a classroom for children in Cameroon. What a BRILLIANT effort - and such a memorable event...
Thanks to the fabulous financial support we have received from this year, we have been able to help SHUMAS to construct classroom blocks at desperately needy schools, like the one in the picture above at EP Maye Ibbe in the Extreme North region of Cameroon. This...
We are very pleased to be able to announce that we have started the 2016 building programme with classroom blocks at two primary schools in the NW Region. GS Keonom is really looking forward to new classrooms to replace this very fragile construction, and St. Francis...
Bamboo Crowd employees set themselves the challenge of running from Henley on Thames to Regents Park - 100 kms - to raise money for our projects ..... and they did it in December! Brrrr !! They formed themselves into teams and ran a relay of 20 kms each team -...
We are pleased to publish our latest newsletter, which you can download and print if you wish. You will see that we haven't included any pictures in this edition - that is because we had SO MUCH we wanted to say following our recent visit to Cameroon that there...
Imagine our delight when we opened the post today to find this note and a donation of £2. Thank you very much, Sam.
Young Amelie Hindle is a regular fundraiser for us. She is currently helping her dad, Andrew, raise enough funds to construct classrooms and clean water at Ngouekong King Place primary school in Babadjou, West Region. Earlier this year Andrew undertook the...
We are so lucky to get the support of young Mariyah Nadeem. She is just turning 18 and now that she has left school, she has recognised how really lucky she has been to get such a good education in the UK. She has set herself the target of raising £4000 in order to...
The Building School for Africa charity raises money for projects in Cameroon which contribute to the UN development goal of ensuring that boys and girls everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Building Schools for Africa builds schools...
Andrew Hindle is relentless in his efforts to fundraise for our charity - and he is well on his way to achieve his target of £20,000 this year, which will provide classrooms and a latrine at the primary school, water for the village and equipment for the medical...
We are delighted that Positech UK, a one-man computer games company, has chosen to support our charity. The pupils at the little primary school in the village of Salle in the East Region of Cameroon, could hardly believe their good fortune as the school has...
The most splendid Midsummer Ball was held at Birmingham Botanical Gardens on Saturday 13th June. It was part of Andrew and Linda Hindle's fundraising campaign to rebuild the primary school at at the village of Babadjou in the West region, and the event raised well...
We are making a concerted effort this year to get clean drinking water to many of the schools we have already helped with new classroom blocks. The children will no longer have to drink from streams and this will significantly reduce their risk of suffering from...
Congratulations to Andrew Hindle's group of Mud Runners in Derbyshire. They all survived the course - and Andrew managed to keep his bow tie on to the end! They also raised well over £500 towards their target of £20,000 - and they seem determined to smile all the...
The Far North region in Cameroon is exceptionally dry, except during the very short rainy season when flash floods have been known to wash children away whilst they were on their way to school. Getting clean drinking water is very difficult for many school children....
The pupils of Ennis House at Chichester High School for Girls, really pulled out all the stops during their recent Charity Week. With fantastic support from the Head of Year, Kate Whitmill, just 200 girls from 8 form groups raised an amazing £500 for us. How did...
At last the children from all parts of Kumbo Central can travel safely to school. This new permanent river bridge was opened at the end of March 2015. It replaces a dilapidated wood and bamboo structure that was collapsing under the strain of weighty lorries,...
All the trustees of Building Schools for Africa are immensely grateful to the students from Royal Holloway College who were involved in the Insanity Radio broadcast over the Easter holidays. Katherine, Matthew and Harley undertook a mammoth 24-hour charity broadcast...
We have had an unexpected and generous donation which will really give a boost to the students with disabilities at the SHUMAS Rehabilitation Centre. For some years now SHUMAS has been training young adult students with various physical and/or mental difficulties, in...
Good luck and best wishes to Andrew Hindle and his team of fellow mad-caps who are undertaking a sponsored Mud Run for us today (18th April). This is one of several fundraising events which Andrew is organizing to raise money for classrooms and a latrine at this...
The staff at Market Makers and Lead Forensics in Portsmouth are really going the extra mile to raise funds to build schools in Cameroon. This year they have a Mission to get to London by various means. Some people are going to cycle to the capital from Portsmouth,...
We have recently learnt that students from Royal Holloway College in Surrey are undertaking a whole string of 24-hour broadcasts over the Easter Holidays, on their university radio station - Insanity Radio (103.2 FM in the Surrey area, or on-line at insanityradio.com...
The 25th February 2015 was a long awaited day of celebration for the people in Kumbo Central when a brand new Health Centre was opened at Kovifem, funded by BSFA supporters. This forms part of a large integrated project which also included the construction of...
Friday 20th February 2015 was another great day for secondary education in NW Cameroon, with another two Technical Secondary Schools getting new classrooms blocks for their pupils. Government Technical College (GTC) Ntigi in Bambili got four new classrooms and GTC...
The next few months will be a busy time for SHUMAS as it is hoped that all the projects we have funded recently will be handed over to their respective communities in the first quarter of 2015. The communities themselves are busy too - digging new catchments for...
A number of the students at Amherst High School in Massachusetts, USA belong to a club which likes to make an impact on the world. And they have certainly managed that! This year they raised $20,000 which is helping the children at the Government Bilingual Primary...
Andrew Hindle is certainly concentrating on FUN with his fundraising for us in 2015! He is encouraging others to join him in a Wild Warrior Race in April and is also organising a Mid Summer Ball at Birmingham Botanical Gardens on June 13th. His target for...
Huge thanks are due to two local Isle of Wight men's singing groups - the Brighstone Barnacles and the Slipshod Singers - who raised almost £600 for our charity at a concert which formed part of the Brighstone Christmas Tree festival. Thanks very much indeed, chaps....
AidCamps International volunteers have really helped us to put the village of Mbveh on the map this year. The primary school classrooms were refurbished and re-equipped by one group of volunteers in January and in November another group funded the construction of two...
The Building School for Africa charity raises money for projects in Cameroon which contribute to the UN development goal of ensuring that boys and girls everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Building Schools for Africa builds schools...
Market Makers funded a third significant project through BSFA in 2013 and three schools, equipment for a health centre and a water supply at Makanene (Centre Region) are about to be opened by a team of employees who are flying out especially for the occasion. They...
We have now raised over £1million - thanks to the generous donations of our supporters. This is AMAZING!! ... and we would like to thank each and every one of you who have helped us. In the UK, this amount of money would probably build perhaps three classrooms at a...
Our project in Kumbo Central is the largest undertaken by us to date. It will make a significant difference to the lives of thousands of people in the area. Five schools are all now complete and were handed over to the village communities in April 2014. The river...
The tiny school at Ouro Boubi was thrilled to be chosen to receive a new block of three classrooms, funded by the Syndicate Project and opened in May 2014. We have since heard that a road construction company that had been working nearby, have decided to fund another...
Andrew Hindle, and his nephew Dominic Kay, experienced their first visit to Cameroon in the company of Marianne and Jo (BSFA trustees) and Martin Lynch, long-time supporter of the charity. Below is Andrew's report on his trip: he really had a marvellous time. This was...
Building Schools for Africa is about – well it's about doing just that – building schools, so that children like this little chap can have a real role to play in a modern world! However, a brief look at our projects shows that we have a slightly broader remit. In this...
Since April 2007, Building Schools for Africa has funded the construction of over 139 classrooms at 38 schools in Cameroon. Each school has also had a new toilet block, most have had a headteachers office and all have access to a clean water supply. Download...
We may be only a small charity but our supporters have really big hearts - we are so proud to share the news that, during the past four years, we have sent over half a million poinds to SHUMAS for the construction of schools. Download Newsletter - Click Here
Nicky Colwyn organised a splendid charity lunch with jazzwhich took place on a sunny Sunday in September. Very generous friends donated spectacular raffle prizes and “promises” for the auction. It was a glorious event and raised more than £45,000 for BSFA!! We have...
The trustees of Building Schools for Africa together with teachers from Lambeth Academy made a whistle- stop tour of 26 schools in the two weeks we spent with the SHUMAS staff. We witnessed the official handing over of two of the schools which we had funded, when...