Projects

Educating The Whole Child

At Lucy Hawkngs Foundation, we are committed to providing quality education for children most in need of support. The traditional model where academic skills in the areas of Mathematics, Science, Literacy and the arts are an integral part of the school. But we are proud to also systematically help our youth gain skills related to happiness, acquiring virtues and promote self-efficacy.

What we do with your Donations

Working with SHUMAS to build schools and health centres

There is a huge need for a programme of school building in Cameroon. Very many of the existing buildings that we have seen are in such a poor state of repair that they are not only uninhabitable in the rainy season but also dangerously close to collapse.

Each year, SHUMAS receives hundreds of applications from rural villages asking help to rebuild their local schools. It takes into account the dilapidated state of the current school buildings and the community’s readiness to be fully committed to help build their own new classrooms.

We guarantee that every penny donated to our charity will go towards the construction of new classroom blocks, new latrines and clean drinking water and other related projects, in remote rural communities in Cameroon. We can do this because all our Charity’s overheads are covered by our Trustees, who are volunteers.

St. Patrick's Catholic Health Centre

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We help to change these old schools…

Into new ones like this...

It costs so little to build a village primary school in Cameroon, and each school improves the lives of thousands of children.

What is included in a school project

Classroom, Benches and blackboards

A block of three new weatherproof classrooms and a school office, built to a very high specification in terms of durability and hygiene and complete with blackboards, sufficient school benches to accommodate up to 150 children and a teacher’s table and chair for each classroom.

New latrine with handwashing facilities

A new ventilated deep pit latrine with discreet cubicles for boys, girls and teachers which ensure privacy is respected. At secondary schools we aim to provide discrete blocks of latrines for boys and girls, so as to provide privacy for adolescent girls. This simple facility has helped reduce the drop-out rate for girls in secondary education. All latrine blocks now have hand-washing facilities attached and some have a small changing room.

Clean drinking water

A supply of clean drinking water at each school, if possible. Cholera and Typhoid are commonplace amongst the children, who often have to carry water to school from nearby streams. We ask SHUMAS to undertake feasibility studies at each school to establish the most effective method of getting safe drinking water to the school. Costs vary hugely, of course, depending on the topography and the state of the water catchment, but sometimes all that is needed is some additional pipeline and the construction of a standing tap in the school yard – and this can sometimes be incorporated in the ‘package’. We often fund more expensive water projects, such as boreholes with pumps, by combining some of our smaller donations – not a penny raised on our behalf is ever wasted.

Tools and seeds for a school farm

Tools and seeds for a school farm are usually included in a package, if land at the school is available. This allows for school children to learn organic farming skills as part of their curriculum and also generates income, allowing the school to purchase extra teaching/learning materials. In 2016 the Cameroon Government recognised the importance of school farms at SHUMAS’ schools, and has recommended that, where possible, this facility is built in to all schools across the nation.

Investment in Health

Although our main focus has always been on increasing access to school to all children in Cameroon, we quickly realised that children were only able to attend school if their whole family was in good health – otherwise they would be kept back at home to work the farm and keep the family fed. In these cases, family income would fall so low that the payment of health centre charges and school fees would be impossible. Health centres in the remote villages are desperately poor and unhygienic places with little or no equipment. Many women have no antenatal care and consult ‘traditional healers’ when there are problems. This results in high infant and maternal mortality and many live births do not get registered, leaving these children disenfranchised for the rest of their lives.

We funded our first health centre project, refurbishing and re-equipping the centre at Dzeng, in 2012. It is now a thriving facility and, such was its success that we have replicated this project in five other communities and have also been able to provide new equipment to many other centres.

Similarly, we have been able to fund new community water projects, providing access to clean drinking water in areas which are very succeptible to water borne diseases like malaria, typhoid and cholera.