Light for Future
School in Ng'ombe

In addition to individual sponsorships, we also support the Light For Future School in Ngombe, a district of Lusaka. Here we subsidize the small community school selectively for school materials, construction projects, school meals and other running costs.

Our partner, Input e.V., also finances a daily school meal for the 300 children here, which we have also contributed to from time to time.

School staff

The four young men on the left are teachers, next to them the janitor, on the far right the principal and founder of the school, Maureen.

History of the school

The Light for Future School is a community school in Lusaka’s largest slum, Ng’ombe. The school started out as a kind of private tutoring center run by founder Maureen Banda, who as a young woman gathered her neighbors’ children in a public square in the village in her free time and taught them every day free of charge. She paid for books, a small blackboard and chalk herself by working as an office clerk during the day. She quickly spread the word that children could learn to read and write here free of charge. Soon the number of children who wanted to learn from Maureen every day exceeded the available space.

With the help of her own salary and the support of some parents and the local chief (a kind of district mayor), she rented a small building and hired two volunteer teachers, while she herself continued to come in the afternoons.

In this state, we got to know Maureen and her small school in 2017 through a mutual acquaintance. Thanks to donations and the approval of local funding, daily school meals were started and school uniforms were produced and distributed. The pupils come from precarious backgrounds, many of them often have nothing to eat at home for days on end and wear broken or undersized clothes. The school meals and uniforms have made a huge difference!

In 2019, donors from Germany made it possible to purchase the dilapidated building and construct a new school building with four classrooms on the site. More than 300 children from grades 1 to 7 now attend the Light for Future School.