Projects

Torrential rains and clay-like dirt have created drainage challenges at Dekpor Basic School since we have been on the scene.

The resulting erosion would eventually damage buildings, so we have tackled this massive undertaking!

There is now a trench that has been dug around the exterior perimeter of the compound, most of which is marked by the backs of the classrooms. There has been substantial grading done to help direct runoff in the right direction. Gutters constructed.

We have 5 town toilet facilities and also toilets at the school campus.  They require daily maintenance, but also, every couple of years, they must be pumped out.

Mid-June, Abraham and Linda received the terrible news that a family experienced a devastating fire. Basically, their mud hut and all their belongings--with the exception of one little cooking pot--were completely destroyed. Mom, Dad, and 4 children were left to tackle the rainy season with no shelter.

Immediately a Facebook campaign was started and within mere hours, so many lovely people jumped to the rescue!

Purchased:

For 4 weeks, our elementary school students are getting an opportunity that hasn't been available the last couple of years due to the pandemic ... it's vacation school time!

Now, granted, most kids around the world aren't thrilled with the idea of more school when they are supposed to be on holiday, but you have to look at the whole bigger picture.

An Austrian friend of ours who has actually visited the village to visit her sponsored student, Ulrike Sprosec, retired and asked that the monetary donations be directed to DSDO! What a beautiful gift! Ulrike requested that we help a woman with a business start-up.  We are so pleased that we were able to help two!

Raising chickens can provide a family with a constant source of income and protein.  We hired some of our recent grads to do the construction.  Two chicken coops were built.

Honest to gosh, this has been a long time coming and we are extremely thankful that we were finally in the position to install manufactured eaves troughs on the school campus!

Up until this point, we have had to make do with flimsy, handmade metal eaves that, unfortunately, required fixing after every single rainy season, i.e. twice a year.

The gift of a cell phone is, quite frankly, life-changing.

There is no high school in all of  Dekpor, so our high school students are stationed in different towns. Their teachers share course materials and assignments using WhatsApp, but, there is a big snag if one doesn't own a smartphone.   Sadly, there aren't just computer labs or loads of text books in the high schools.  

Yahoo!  With a massive thank you to Alan Lawrence, we are pleased to share that we are able to provide after school ICT classes at Dekpor Basic School again for this school year! 

We have a computer lab beyond anything in the entire region. There are 41 raspberry pi stations, thanks to our friends in Austria. And really, it all comes down to Philip Schäffer who is the key person behind the entire functioning of our current computer lab! Philip has visited Dekpor several times and with each visit he improves the lab for the good of the students.

This is the 4th time that we have run this campaign and it was another beautiful success! Many of the kids you see in our photos don't actually have anything under their outer layer of clothing.

We are SO thankful that we are able to provide this most amazing  event for our Dekpor Basic School students for the third time!  The dentists first visited in 2019 and then, for a second time, during February of 2021.