We’ve gotten word from ELF, the International Super Junior Fan Club,  that they will be supporting Build a School in Africa again this year. In 2015, clubs around the world raised enough to fund our 14th new school, benefiting deserving children in Mali, West Africa.

Thank you ELF! Good luck with your fundraising! The children of Mali will be so grateful for their beautiful new school!

ELF chapters around the world hope to raise enough money to build a new school dedicated to our favorite K-Pop idols.

The Lincoln Journal, in Massachusetts, published a great article about how a group of local students is raising money to help us build schools in Africa.

Since its start in 2011, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School’s Schools for Africa Club has been fundraising to build a school in Mali, West Africa — a country with one of the lowest literacy rates on the continent.

The student-run group is trying to raise $25,000 to erect a school to accommodate more than 100 students through the nonprofit organization Build a School in Africa, which has raised funds and built a new school every year in Mali since 2005.

Read the full story here.

Judy Lorimer from Build a School in Africa visited Mali in November with our annual contribution to help build our 5^th school. Save the Children hosted a ceremony on November 18th to lay the first brick for a new elementary school in the village of Mounkonkoro. Our project this year was helped greatly by the Binnie family from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Their two sons, Adam and Dylan, with their Dad Bill’s support, raised $10,000 this summer. This donation, plus the $9,000 raised by Build a School In Africa, will provide about 2/3 of the funding for the new school building.

Mounkonkoro is a village northwest of Sikasso, populated by the members of the Senufo ethnic group. Last year Save the Children built one three-room school in the village, and this year we are adding 3 more classrooms, so they will have a complete primary school for grades 1 – 6. At the Binnie’s request, the new school will be named for Christine Laidlaw.

Welcome to Mounkonkoro, site of our 5th school – in partnership with Save the Children and the Binnie family of Portsmouth, NH

Senufo Balafon players

High-tech transport for sacks of cement

The school foundation is dug with pick & shovel

Cinder blocks for the new school. The first school building is in the background, for grades 4, 5, and 6. The new school will house grades 1, 2, and 3.

Grinding millet in Sintani, using smooth stones to crush the grains

Fulani women in Sintani

Build a School in Africa volunteer Judy Lorimer with Assetou Diarra, her new sponsored child.