Tokumma Elementary School is located in West Shoa zone of Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia. The school’s catchment area is about 35 km2 with a population of about 3,000. The source of income in the area is largely traditional farming and animal rearing. The area does not have proper modern infrastructure including road, electricity, potable water and health facility.
However, last year, the Tokumma school enjoyed the benefits of a joint British & Foreign School Society (BFSS) project which helped expand the school to accommodate over 150 extra pupils in three new classrooms. It also constructed a new library – a hugely important source of information and education for the children and local community – which can serve up to 40 pupils at a time!
As well as this brilliant expansion in the school’s capacity, this BFSS-funded project, coordinated with Link Ethiopia, also funded the installation of a solar-powered electricity system, which provides clean, sustainable energy to classrooms. This has allowed the school – in a village with no electricity connection – to provide lighting to classrooms and to power radios!
Building on previous work, Link Ethiopia’s new project at the school, once again in cooperation with the BFSS and with generous help from our Swiss donor Christian Sailer and the Gymnasium Kirchenfeld, will create a solar-powered IT centre at the school, and one which will be connected to the internet! This will be a huge improvement in the educational opportunities that Tokumma school can provide to their pupils, and will be getting under way in the next few weeks! We look forward to seeing how this new project progresses, and hope we can match the success of our previous work at the school.
If you want to learn more about the technology projects Link Ethiopia has worked on, you can read about them on our Technology Blog here. If you would like to support the work we do to improve children’s access to a quality education, you can head to our website and donate.