Two years ago, the land where now nearly 400 children now learn and grow was no more than a field of banana trees at the base of Mount Meru. Now, enough trees to feed the children fresh fruit still tower tall over a facility that now includes six classrooms, a technology lab, two gardens, a kitchen, restrooms, a playground and a school bus that shuttles many small children down bumpy dirt roads to school.

Now, her dream bolstered further by funds and global support raised during TweetsGiving 2009, Mama Lucy is expanding even further. Construction has begun on the school’s first library and an additional classroom at Shepherds Junior School! The classroom will allow the school to expand to the seventh grade next year when the oldest students will take national examinations to qualify for secondary school.

In the midst of a busy beginning to the new school year, Mama Lucy sent us a quick note with a few photos to keep us updated on her amazing progress. She wrote:

Habari zenu?

I’m SO happy to write to you and send few photos, hoping this might make you feel as if you are at Shepherds compound:) I’m so excited to see the work is moving so fast.

The photos show students at our Nursery and other pics taken at our Primary school – Moivaro. The new babies are so cute! They are very active and they are happy to be at school. You can tell from the pics:) The pics showing construction were taken 3 – 4 days ago.

The construction is going well especially for classroom 7. At least you can see we are moving. The Library is moving but not as fast as the other one. They’ve been dealing with metal work for some days, after getting the blue print for the metal work. The work of roofing the ground floor will start within these 3 days, and they said we’ll have to wait for 21 days to dry. I’m sure they’ll be doing some other work while waiting for those days. I don’t know:( As this is our first time to do this kind of work, we have to be patient:)

I’ve attached few photos showing classroom 7 and Tech/Library to show how far we’ve moved.

It would be great to see you again after few months!!!!! Say hi to all.

Love you all!!!

Mama

The slideshow pictures below show the exciting construction progress and as well as the incoming preschool students that Mama Lucy mentioned. You can also view the Flickr photo set directly here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

And, just as a reminder of how this classroom & library will impact your world and mine, check out this tweet from Glory, one of the students who will move up to seventh grade next year: