Help Matjana Preschool welcome four year old learners!

 

Matjana has been providing high-quality early childhood learning opportunities for the five year olds of Ndabeni area Kaphunga, for ten years. Now we’re getting ready to enrol four year old learners- the Matjana mums have already started collecting rocks to support the foundation.!

Our goal is to have a new classroom full of four year olds at the start of the 2017 school year. But we’ll be needing the help of our international supporters.

Can you help make our grand plan a reality, by making a donation or organising a fundraising event?

We have a committed community and E30,000 (AU$3000/US$2155/€1915). We need to get organised and find another E170,000 (AU$16,000/ US$12,500/ €11,000) to reach our goal. We’ll need about half of that to buy everything we need to get started, and about two-thirds of that amount to ensure we have the bare essential ready to enrol four year olds, and the remainder to put on the finishing touches. It’s an ambitious plan!

See the  preliminary budget.

And we’re counting on your help. We wouldn’t have been able to make this decision if we had not developed a fantastic group of supporters.

Please consider how you can to contribute to fundraising to help us build a new classroom and provide the four year old kids in our community an opportunity to go to school. If you’re planning a fundraiser, please let Michelle (mich@matjanapreschool.org) and Londi (londi@matjanapreschool.org) know so we can share the news. If you’ve got something to contribute right now, please put it in to one of our  bank accounts and email to let us know.

When thinking about how you can help, please remember:

•          Every dollar makes a difference! We obviously need some bigger donations, but if you only have a little bit, remember that even small amounts make a real difference (e.g. ten or fifteen bucks in your currency, is food for a week for all our kids).
•          Every cent we receive in donations goes to the school. We’ll use it to construct the classroom and play equipment, buy food for our kids and pay our teachers (young women from the community). All the people who do our fundraising and admin work contribute their time and skills voluntarily.
•          We are owned and run by the community, and all the infrastructure we develop becomes an asset owned by the community.
•          As a community we actively support Matjana Preschool and continuously donate our time and energy to developing and operating our school. It’s a resource we really value and want to continuously improve.
•          For the last two years we have had to turn away 15 four year olds (and a few three year olds!) because we didn’t have space for them. It’s horrible having to send them home and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen in 2017!