One of our trustees, Andrew Hindle (Main Road Films) has written and shot a promotional film for our charity which has now been published on our website. Please view it by clicking on the link in our Main Menu on the Home Page. The film is about a factory owner who...
We would like to thank everyone who donated to our Big Give Christmas Appeal in December. Thanks to your support - and that of our Pledger and our Champion, as well as the incredible generosity of Gompels Healthcare who offered to continue matching donations during...
This project has not been the easiest to undertake. The village of Moh in Nkambe, NW Region, is very remote at the best of times but the political crisis in that region, combined with torrential rains which made roads impassable, meant that transportation of building...
This brand new classroom block, complete with pupils benches and teachers' tables and chairs, is set to significantly improve the outcomes of the 164 pupils already enrolled at the school. Up until we undertook this project, CETIC Koupa Mengke had just 2 classrooms -...
The new big school of St Francis in Bafut, NW Region, is almost ready to be handed over to the community. There is just the plastering to finish and the painting left to do. Excitement is growing in the village. It is another huge project for our charity to have...
We are extremely pleased to be funding another Education in Emergency project focussing on getting Internally Displaced children, who have been out of school for many years, back into education. (Please see the short film in our post dated 7th Feb 2025) This year we...
Thanks to the generosity of our supporters at Gompels Healthcare, we have been able to fund the construction of an 8-classroom school in Bafut, NW Region. St Francis Xavier Nursery and Primary School is progressing fast and will, hopefully, be ready to hand over to...
The completed classroom block at EP Bagam was finally handed over to the community in September - just in time for the start of the new academic year. The three new classrooms provide much needed space at this overcrowded school so that another 90 children will be...
We have recently been able to provide funding for the drilling of a new borehole in Kumbo, NW Region, where the water system in the town has been broken for some time. The borehole is located at the only secondary school which is still functioning since the start of...
Three separate communities will be celebrating the start of the new academic year in September when they each receive a new block of classrooms, classroom furniture, a new latrine, a head teacher's office and the makings of a school farm to earn income and aid...
On 19th June 2025, the IDP children of Galim Neighbourhood Learning Corner graduated in a wonderful ceremony fitting to their achievements. 67 children who had been out of school for over 6 years because of the war in the NW region, and who could barely read or write...
The Hindle family have long been supporters of this charity - and they don't shy away from challenging themselves in order to raise funds for us. Andrew and Linda Hindle have always encouraged their children, Amelie and Fraser, to get involved too. Both children...
During our visit to Bamenda this year, we were pleased to call in to see the new Ante Natal Clinic and Infant Welfare Hall at the Nkwen Health Centre in action. This project was funded by our long-standing supporters, Gompels HealthCare and, although by the time we...
On 12th April 2025, Marianne Johnson and Stuart Whitman, two of our trustees, were privileged to represent Building Schools for Africa at the funeral of Ndzerem Stephen Njodzeka, the founder of our partner NGO, SHUMAS. It was a momentous occasion, as was fitting for...
CETIC Koupe Menke is a bilingual technical secondary school in the West Region with 164 pupils and 13 teachers. It currently has just 2 classrooms, which are borrowed from a local primary school and are in a bad state of repair. It has very few benches that can be...
Following on from the success of our Economic Empowerment for Education (3E) Project over the past couple of years, we have managed to fund a further 75 women IDPs who had fled from the rural villages of the NW Region to Bamenda. These women had lost everything in...
It's been almost ten years since we have been able to undertake a school building project in the rural parts of NW Cameroon. All government schools were closed due to the political crisis, but CS St Martin in Moh, being a mission school, was allowed to function. ...
Any new development at a Health Centre is always very welcome - but for the people of Nkwen, the construction of a purpose built ante natal and infant welfare hall has been a real life saver for many hundreds of women and babies in this corner of Bamenda. The...
One of the most inspiring projects undertaken in 2024/25 has been our Education in Emergency project, where 260 children in seven communities of the NW and West regions have been helped back into education, having missed more than five years of school. Since the start...
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Stephen Ndzerem, the founder and Director General of SHUMAS, our partner NGO in Cameroon. He died on 18th January 2025 after a short illness. Trustees of Building Schools for Africa first met Stephen in 2006,...
We would like to send a huge vote of thanks to all our supporters for their generous donations to our Big Give Christmas.Challenge at the end of last year. We were on tenterhooks for the whole of the Christmas Challenge week but - thanks to you - we not only reached...
We are excited to be part of the Big Give Christmas Challenge again for 2024. The online match funding campaign is running from midday on Tuesday 3 December 2024 to midday on Tuesday 10 December 2024. Your donations made during this time will be doubled, so it's the...
Thanks to the generosity of our supporters at Gompels Healthcare, we have been able to fund a large-scale water project in one quarter of Bamenda (Ntamafe 11) which will improve the health of around 150 households (800 people) and the 400 pupils of the local school....
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 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...
In recent months we have been able to build again on the enormous success of our Economic Empowerment for Education Project. A further 75 destitute internally displaced women, now living in Yaounde and Bamenda, have been selected to benefit from SHUMAS' small...
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 thrilled to be able to announce that a couple of our supporters have offered to fund another school building project this year. It will take place at a small village called Peere, in the Adamawa Region. Until recently the school (Ecole Publique parent de...
It was very exciting and encouraging to see how the community has come out to help on this project - our biggest school building project to date. This is Participatory Development at its very best! The ground floor construction (three classrooms) is now complete and...
Building Schools For Africa 2008 - 2023 Building Schools for Africa started as an idea in 2007 when Marianne (founding trustee of BSFA) came home from Cameroon with tales of a small rural community called Ntseimbang which was desperately in need of a school. She had...
Once again, with support from our funders, we have been able to help impoverished women who are the lone heads of households, establish livelihoods for themselves and thus be able to feed their families and send their children to school. This year we have been able...
Almost one year to the day that the new classrooms and office were handed over to the community in the village of Sogum in Cameroon's Far North Region, a team from the SHUMAS office in Maroua visited to assess the impact of the project. We are pleased to say that the...
There is a small plot of land behind St Paul's Catholic church in Ntahteka, Bamenda, which will soon be home to our most ambitious school project yet. When our trustees visited this school in January 2023, over 300 children from the local area were squeezed into small...
Ecole Publique Kodek is situated in a village about 7 Kms from Maroua, the capital of the Far North Region of Cameroon. The school currently has 800 pupils enrolled but it has not had a supply of clean drinking water - until now! This small project, costing just...
23rd November 2023 was a day of great celebration in Kongola - a rural village in the sub-division of Maroua III in the Far North of Cameroon - as three new classrooms, an office and a new latrine (funded by BSFA and constructed by SHUMAS) were being handed over to...
Many thanks to everyone who supported us during the Big Give Christmas Challenge. With our matched funding, we reached a total of almost £6,000. 100% of this money will go directly to our current projects in Cameroon - the Economic Empowerment for Education...
This year, Building Schools for Africa has linked up with the Big Give Christmas Challenge where modest individual donations to our charity, made between Tuesday November 28th and Tuesday December 5th through the link below, will be matched - up to a total of £6,250. ...
Our partner, SHUMAS, has a new initiative designed to raise awareness in young people about environment issues, and also to improve their carbon footprint. It is called the SHUMAS Healing the Earth Strategy and all projects will now incorporate this message. The...
We were so delighted to learn that the British High Commissioner, Mr. Barry Lowen, was able to visit the Technical High School at Kongola whilst he was in the Far North region recently. CETIC Kongola is our latest school building project, which is due to be handed...
There was great excitement today amongst the 800 children and the teachers at the primary school in Kodek, which is located approximately 7 Kms from Maroua, the capital of the Far North region of Cameroon. A huge drilling rig arrived at the school and started to...
The SHUMAS Rehab Unit at Mile 6 Nkwen, has undergone an major transformation in the past months. For many years it provided training in skills from tailoring to hairdressing, shoe-making to basket weaving for disabled adults who were otherwise unable to earn a living...
The school hall at All Saints Catholic College in Bayelle, Bamenda, was packed with pupils who were buzzing with excitement at the prospect of being able to study in their brand new science lab. The fully equipped lab was handed over to the College in a wonderful...
“ICO's goal is to be the leading international organisation working for peace and reconciliation in divided conflict settings with a special focus on enabling minority communities in these divided settings to participate in the respective peace process.” (James...
Dear amazing Donors BSFA and SHUMAS have just given us the greatest honour of allowing us to come visit Cameroon and see the amazing work that they do. During our trip we travelled all over the country, seeing the potential that the diverse landscape and motivated...
The Far North region is the second most populated region of Cameroon and one of the poorest. The region currently faces immense challenges including weak public services and chronic insecurity caused by armed conflicts by the Boko Haram. The impacts of climate change...
Two sixth-formers recently spent three weeks of their summer holiday working with our partner, SHUMAS, on behalf of Building Schools for Africa. Oby Gompels and Monty Woodward weren't entirely sure what they were letting themselves in for - but they declare they had a...
We are excited to be funding another school building project in the Far North region this year. The school that will be benefitting from a new classroom block, latrine with hand washing facilities and COVID 19 prevention materials is CETIC de Kongola in Maroua 111...
We are excited to announce that work will soon start on a new Science Lab at All Saints Catholic College Bayelle in Bamenda, NW Region. All Saints College was created in 2019 in response to many requests from parents of children who had attended other secondary...
By Oliver Smith In the early 1960s, after gaining independence from France and the UK, Cameroon was considered a place of hope in the central part of Africa, building essential infrastructure such as roads and railways as well as profitable agricultural and petroleum...
“There’s nothing greater than the feeling of helping another human. That's what motivates us.” Stephen Ndzerem, Founder and Director General, SHUMAS At Building Schools for Africa we have always been aware of the effectiveness of our exclusive partnership with...
12th December 2022 was a joyful day in the village of Sogum. After years of having to use straw huts as classrooms, the primary school in the village took ownership of three new properly constructed classrooms and a school office, built by SHUMAS contractors and...
These are the beneficiaries of the Economic Empower for Education project that BSFA trustees met in Yaounde on 28th January 2023. Meriline is 35 years old. She came to Yaounde three years ago with her children aged 13, 10 and 6. She used to live in Kumbo and said she...
When there is war in a country, it is essential for humanitarian agencies to be able to respond quickly to the changing needs of suffering communities and not have their response slowed by needless bureaucracy. Fortunately, our partner in Cameroon, SHUMAS, is expert...
Normally our trustees visit Cameroon every year to monitor progress of our various projects, but this has not been possible in recent years because of the pandemic ... so the trip we made this January was really action-packed with SO MANY projects to visit and people...
It was with mixed feelings that we ventured down into the middle of the town of Bamenda during our trip to Cameroon this year. Bamenda has always been our 'home away from home' since we starting our partnership with SHUMAS, but we haven't been able to go there since...
During our visit to Cameroon we met just some of the 100 IDP women that we have helped our partner, SHUMAS, to train in small business management. The women were then each given start up materials, to the value of 50,000 CFAs (£65) to get their businesses started. In...
Kindness Shaye is a 28 year old single mother of three children, aged 12, 10 and 7. She was physically abused by the father of the children who finally abandoned them and, because of the intense violence of the political crisis in her home village of Ndu, she fled...
Last year we helped SHUMAS to launch a new initiative aimed at teenage boys and girls from the NW region, who had been forced to drop out of school early because of the war. Most of these children had lost family members, some had signed up as child soldiers, many of...
Please read all about what we have achieved in partnership with Shumas Cameroon over the past six months. 2022 Summer newsletter
Whilst SHUMAS staff were busy implementing the Humanitarian Aid project at the IDP communities in Fungom, they were approached by many of the community leaders who begged them to try to find some way of getting their children back to school. They were desperate. All...
This year we funded SHUMAS to undertake its biggest humanitarian aid project so far. 506 households – a total of 3050 Internally Displaced People - had been identified as being in dire need of humanitarian assistance in the Fungom district of Menchum Division in the...
Spotted by our intrepid trustee from the Midlands, Andrew Hindle. The Cameroon flag and team taking part in the rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony for the Commonwealth Games. Welcome to England - and Good Luck!
It has always been a problem for the poorest people in Cameroon to be able to earn sufficient money to send their children to school - and during the past seven years of war this situation has got worse and worse. The majority of the 3000+ anglophones who have been...
Andrew Hindle and his family have been supporting this charity for the past ten years, during which time, they have raised funds for the construction of three primary schools, two school water supplies and the upgrading of a rural health centre. Their fundraising has...
It's not an easy task for our partners at SHUMAS, to find a suitable school project for our funders and then bring it all to completion without any hitches. There can be any number of incidents that can cause a project to have to be abandoned - and the collection of...
Some months ago we reported that the construction of a new classroom block at GBHS Ntui had been started. Close to 900 pupils were already attending this secondary school, including 100 Internally Displaced children, and with only 12 classrooms in the entire school,...
In 2015 we funded the construction of a secondary school building at Sabongari in the NW region and also helped the local heath centre with some new equipment. The community there was thrilled with both projects and the village really started to thrive. However, in...
Our biggest Humanitarian Relief project yet - read about it in our newsletter Please click on the link below to read our newsletter - giving details of what we have achieved since the summer 2022 January newsletter
We recently sent a report to Andrew Hindle, one of our wonderful regular supporters, showing the progress that had been made on the project he and his family had funded. This was his response to us: "Excellent. Yes thank you, I received the report and (it was) really...
It is salutary to note that the recent start of the African Cup of Nations football competition, hosted by Cameroon, has prompted the British media to suddenly show an interest in the five-year long war in that country. The war, between the French-speaking...
We are hoping that our next school project will be underway soon in the village of Njimbong in the Littoral region. This village is very remote in the forest area, 28 Kms from the nearest town of Yabassi. The school was created in 2014. It is the only school in the...
This is our biggest humanitarian aid project yet, in terms of numbers of people who will be helped - and the impact will be huge. SHUMAS has identified 506 IDP households - a total of 3050 people - who are very isolated and vulnerable, living in abject poverty and...
Water is essential for life and in rural Cameroon, it is usually the women and girls who have to collect water each day for the family needs. To have potable water near to their homes saves hours of walking and means more girl children can go to school, so we have...
It has been five years now since all schools in the NW/SW regions of Cameroon were closed because of war. More than 78 of these have been destroyed in the fighting and, although a few are now back functioning again, there are no formal schools open at all in the Bui...
The dry season has arrived at last in Cameroon, and work started immediately on the new classroom block at the Government Bilingual High School in the village of Ntui in the Centre region. The foundations were dug in record time and the groundwork has now been...
Since the political crisis started back in 2016, two primary schools and a nursery school in the village of Bayelle, have joined forces to make one large primary and nursery school with approximately 2,000 pupils and 55 teachers. It has managed to keep functioning...
Our fabulous supporters, the Hindle Family, have been pulling out all the stops again to raise money for a project that is close to their hearts. In 2019, Andrew and Linda and their two children - Amelie and Fraser - travelled to Cameroon to witness the handover of a...
It was so exciting to learn this week that the little primary school at Fungeh is still doing well. When we first visited Fungeh, back in 2008, the school was being held in a crumbling ruin with a meagre thatch roof. The children had a constant battle with rain and...
This brand new school building was handed over to the community at Mindassi in the Central Region in April 2021. It is a marked improvement on the old school building (see pictures below) which had three tiny classrooms for 6 year groups, very few benches and no...
It's the little things in life that mean the most - especially if you haven't been able to go to school for years and you are desperate to catch up! St John's school in Bamenda needed lots of new benches so that the children didn't have to be crowded together in the...
The children in Jakiri have not been able to attend school for more than four years. Almost all schools in the NW Region have been closed because of the socio-politial crisis that has been escalating since 2016, but the children were desperate to get back to...
Reports of high salaries paid to charity staff have recently appeared in the UK press. The highest paid UK charity CEO reportedly earns £4.5 million a year. Salaries over £100k are very common in the UK charity sector. In the light of this the Charity Commission is...
It's just a few more days before children in the UK return to school after two months of having to work from home. Our schools will be prepared with COVID testing facilities and social distancing in place. Imagine what it must be like for these children who have...
At the beginning of 2020, we received a wonderful donation of 21 reconditioned laptops from our supporters at Willmott Dixon. These were destined to be shipped out to Cameroon and distributed to some of our secondary schools there - but unfortunately the pandemic...
Our regular supporters will have received our latest newsletter in their inboxes last week. We hope you all enjoyed reading about all we have achieved over the past six months. If any of you missed it, try checking your Spam files (just in case!) .... or you can have...
Our project to provide emergency humanitarian relief to 1000 of the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the hard-to-reach areas wasn't exactly easy to deliver! But our partner, SHUMAS, was as resourceful as ever. Many items, including 400 mattresses and mosquito...
It's hard for most of us living in the West to imagine what it must be like for people who suddenly become IDPs in their own country. This has happened to almost a million Cameroonians in the NW and SW regions simply because they are English speaking, living in...
The St John Nursery and Primary school in Nkwen, NW Region was started by missionaries in 1988. It was always a very popular and busy school until the escalation of the crisis caused all schools in the region to close in 2016. However, it ventured to re-open in...
December 4th 2020 saw the opening of the third purpose-built High School science lab that our charity has been able to fund. This one is at the Government Bilingual High School Bekoko in Littoral Region. The school has just over 1000 students at present, including...
On the night of 11th October 2018, the little village of N'taba in NW Region was attacked by unidentified armed men. The houses were razed to the ground, the villagers' cattle were stolen and the 171 villagers fled, taking nothing with them, to Kourap in the West...
St Odile is the largest Health Centre in Edea, Littoral Region, but it doesn't have clean drinking water and it doesn't have a reliable electricity supply. It sees around 2000 patients annually, including mothers with premature babies from across the whole area. ...
Five years ago, BSFA was able to help the village of Sabongari by funding the construction of a classroom block at their secondary school. The villagers have remained very grateful and good friends of our partner SHUMAS ever since. They heard that SHUMAS was helping...
We are so pleased to be able to announce that the little primary and nursery school, CS Charles Luanga, in Up Station Bamenda will soon have a new school building, complete with furniture and blackboards, a head teacher's office and a new latrine - thanks to a...
We are delighted to have been able to fund the construction of a pop-up school in each of two IDP communities (Nkah and Benakuma) in the forest regions this year, and to provide learning materials for a third community school in the semi-urban community of Chinde. ...
The emergency humanitarian relief project for 1000 Internally Displaced People, which BSFA funded earlier this year, has been such a great success that we are now able to repeat it, on a smaller scale, thanks to additional funds donated by our wonderful supporters....
Many children in the developed countries of the world will be feeling excited and relieved to be getting back to school after six months of being stuck at home because of the Coronavirus. Imagine how the anglophone children in Cameroon must be feeling after almost...
Back in 2015, thanks to our wonderful supporters at Market Makers, we funded some school projects in Mbiame, one of which was the little Nursery School at Ntoh Mbiame. The following year, unfortunately, almost all schools in the NW and SW regions started to close...
Many of the children in the IDP communities in Cameroon are suffering from either Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) or Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) during this period of political unrest. It is very hard for families to get food. Their livelihoods and farms are...
Here are two examples of how practical help can enable children to continue with their education. Nearly all schools in the NW Region have been closed for almost four years, but the teacher training college at Mbengwi has been struggling to keep open as often as...
Since 2016, Bui Division in the NW Region has been particularly hard hit by violence of the Anglophone crisis. This is a Division where, over the years, Building Schools for Africa and SHUMAS have been extremely effective in improving both access to education and the...
We recently received a wonderful donation of 21 reconditioned laptops from Willmott Dixon. These are destined for children in secondary education and will make an enormous difference to their ability to study and pass exams. In Cameroon around 90% of children write...
As if there weren't enough difficulties in Cameroon at the moment, COVID-19 has now arrived and it is spreading quickly. Our partner in Cameroon, SHUMAS, has been quick to respond to this new crisis and is busy getting information about social distancing and how to...
During our trustees' visit to Cameroon in November 2019, we saw at first hand some of the appalling situations of the anglophone Internally Displaced People (IDPs), thousands of whom had fled their homes, farms and businesses in the NW and SW regions in order to...
Thanks to three large donations from supporters, we have very nearly reached our target for the Special Appeal to improve the living conditions of 1000 Internally Displaced People in hard-to-reach communities in the forests and the bush regions of NW & SW...
Our most grateful thanks are due, once again, to the children at the Dragon School in Oxford who recently sent us a second marvellous donation of over £300 towards our projects. Last November, the BSFA trustees who travelled out to Cameroon to hand over our 2019...
This November we were fortunate to have a meeting with the newly appointed Prime Minister of Cameroon, His Excellency Joseph Ngute. His Special Adviser has known of SHUMAS' work with BSFA for many years and he was keen that the Prime Minister should learn more about...
Schools These pictures of old and new school buildings show just some of what we achieved in 2019, thanks to the generous donations of our supporters. New classroom blocks,...
We build new toilets at each of our school projects. They are not fancy by western standards: they are Ventilated Deep Pit Latrines which are divided into cubicles, providig essential privacy - and they are appropriate structures for these rural locations. Each...
Our latest newsletter can be downloaded here Newsletter _ Summer 2019 Update Our emphasis this year, across all our projects, has been to help as many Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Cameroon as possible. We hope you find it an enjoyable and informative read.
This is the kind of makeshift house that thousands of families now call home in the jungle and bush areas of the NW and SW regions of Cameroon. Their villages have been burned, their subsistence farms destroyed, family members killed. They live in fear of their...
The UN has recently announced that the number of anglophones who have become displaced since the start of the political crisis in 2016 has doubled since 2018. There are now a million IDPs from the NW and SW regions of Cameroon - very many of whom have fled to the...
We are so proud and very very happy to announce that our 100th school building project has been completed. The primary school in the village of Konya Mbetta, in the Centre region, is finished and the children are already using their new classrooms. There will be a...
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...