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Friends of Ebenezer Australia Inc

11 December 2012 UCF Comments Off

Building Project
Part of the Ebenezer vision is to build a High School and Skills Training Centre on, or near, the site of the present school in Livingstone, Zambia.

The Friends of Ebenezer Australia Inc (FoEA) is a community-based group in Maleny, Queensland. It exists for the sole purpose of raising funds to support the Ebenezer Child Care Trust, which is a non-denominational organisation dedicated to the welfare and education of orphaned and disadvantaged children in Livingstone, Zambia. FoEA is itself a registered charity.

The Ebenezer Child Care Trust has the long-term aim of extending its educational programme – beyond the Children’s Home and Primary School to secondary schooling and also to trade training - believing that social and economic improvements will be vital to an improvement in health and overall quality of life for the population.

There are currently just over 400 students moving up through the Primary School Years in the Ebenezer School. They are achieving outstanding results in National Testing programs. Once their primary schooling is complete, they will need to move away and attend a larger centre, with the inevitable attrition rate. At present, there is little or no opportunity for Trade Skills Training.

This building project will:

  • put bricks and mortar together to establish the secondary school buildings at a much lower cost;
  • model self-sufficiency to the authorities and community and
  • enable a large proportion of the 400+ young people to continue their learning in an integrated setting rather than a dislocated one.

FoEA is one of four international groups that assist in the Ebenezer Project in Zambia. Other groups raise funds in the UK, Sweden and Canada.

FoEA applied to UCF for the major part of their quarter-share to purchase a $10,000usd concrete block-making machine which would significantly reduce the cost of building the walls and floors of the Academic Centre.

A UCF grant of $2,000 was awarded to Friends of Ebenezer Australia Inc to help fund the block making machine. The Directors liked the fact that the community would use the machine to build the new Academic Centre and the machine would then become a teaching/training resource to train students in the proposed Skills Training Centre.