NGOLI Project
What we do in Ngoli
Ngoli is a typical rural village in Northern Zambia. There are 10,000 people in the catchment, 25% of whom are under five years of age.
Malaria, childbirth, AIDS, TB and cholera challenge day to day life.
Almost everyone in Ngoli is a subsistence farmer. The best paid job in the private sector pays $40-$50 a month but these jobs are rare.
By way of contrast, a qualified teacher or nurse will earn as much in a month as these workers earn in a year.
We help support the school and the health centre and we also provide scholarships to ‘vulnerable but viable’ students, giving bright children the possibility to break out of the poverty trap.
In the past we have built houses for teachers, mended the health centre roof and provided equipment for the school and health centre (from books to beds, chalk to chairs and laptops). We source locally, thereby also feeding money into the local economy.
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Special thanks to the Reinsurance Group of America for donating laptops for the school.
This is Christabel when she started High School in 2019, she has now finished year 1 of a 2 year Diploma in Business Studies and is also running a remote business processing invoices for UK companies.
Head teacher, Martin, now has a laptop to plan his lessons and help run the school
Children are keen to learn - all we do is give them a chance
NGOLI Scholarships
Giving children a chance to achieve their dreams
Each year we aspire to take a group of children with potential. These are selected by the teachers and all are considered ‘vulnerable but viable’.
They all come from subsistence farming backgrounds, most have lost a parent; all are bright but none can afford to pay for a tertiary education. In the past we helped with scholarships for Secondary education but this is now free in Zambia so we focus on helping students with their tertiary journey.
From this group we try to select between one and three students who are offered a variety of scholarship opportunities, dependant on their exam grades, for example:
A scholarship to University
A scholarship to Nursing College
A scholarship to Trades College
As of January 2024, 34 students are currently active in the program. Here is how some of them are doing:
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Samuel – Has qualified as a teacher with a Bachelor of Education. Find out about Samuel's story here. Samuel is one of 90,000 qualified teachers who don't have a job in Zambia
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Sula and Victor – graduated as nurses from Chengelo nursing college 2021, Sula now lives and works in Inverness and is employed by NHS Highland as First Assist in Ophthalmology operations, Victor has found work in a rural health centre in Zambia
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Francina, Christopher, Tenant, Maybin, Lloyd and Patience all passed their nursing or midwifery qualifications and join the 15,000 qualified but unemployed medical professionals in Zambia. They are now volunteering as unpaid nurses and midwives.
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Friday - Final Year Batchelor of Public Health degree
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Brian & Bwalya - Year 4 Medical Degree Students
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Esnart - Year 1 Electrical Engineering at NORTEC
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Cornelius - starting Year 2 Nursing College
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Christabel - passed Year 1 of a 2 year Banking and Finance Diploma and has now started a business processing invoices for UK companies. ,
A year at at nursing college costs £700 compared to a year at university which costs £1,300. Technical colleges cost between £600-£850 a year – this is an impossibility for these students’ families, but together we can help these children fulfil their potential.
These students want to work. When they achieve employment much of their salary is used to support their extended families, ensuring the benefits of education trickle down to the wider community.
We partner with the US charity Zambia’s Scholarship Fund to administer these scholarships.
You can find out more about how our scholarship program works and how we are trying to make it sustainable by clicking on our Terms of Reference or by visiting our Documents Page.
Special thanks to Derby Rotary Club for sponsoring three students.
Congratulations to Victor who is now working as a nurse in a rural health centre in the north of Zambia.
Samuel is now a qualified teacher. He came back to Ngoli to help with our selection process in 2018, giving students the chance to ask him what help he had received. Sadly there are 90,000 qualified but unemployed teachers in Zambia - Samuel is yet to find paid work.
To hear more about Samuel's journey click here.
NGOLI Science Block Project
In Oct 2018 ZMCP released funding for a new science block at Ngoli school.The build went well and the block was officially opened in July 2019. The school had been trying to provide a secondary school curriculum but lacked the infrastructure to deliver all the lessons.
The two-room science block cost c. £25,000 and we have fitted it out with the equipment needed for the curriculum. ZMCP provided the funds and the skilled labour, while the community provided raw materials (sand, stone, gravel, mud bricks) and the unskilled labour. ZMCP has set aside a 2 year budget to provide the equipment needed to continue to be able to deliver the curriculum.
This is part of ZMCP’s long term plan to help the school develop in order to deliver a quality of education which is on a par with that being delivered by the schools in the local town. This would mean students could be educated in Ngoli and would not have to travel. The 2019 and 2020 exam results improved but then Covid was a major setback. More recently the Zambian Government made High Schools free for students. This has doubled class sizes and means there is a real strain on teachers to deliver science. Ngoli remains the only rural school in this area with a science facility.
June 2019
The building is complete and science lessons have started. Take a look at the video...
Amazingly the local town, Kasama, has a science equipment store, complete with gold leaf electroscopes.
