Schools For Africa

About Us

Marianne Johnson

Marianne is a retired teacher and is the Chair of Building Schools for Africa. She is also a trustee of AidCamps International, the charity from which Building Schools for Africa evolved. Through her work with AidCamps International, Marianne has taken numerous groups of volunteers to work on rural village school building projects in India, Nepal and Cameroon.

Ian Johnson

Ian is a retired doctor who has also led groups of AidCamps International volunteers on projects in India. He has undertaken several medical electives in hospitals and rural clinics in South Africa, Malawi and Kenya and has recently been awarded a Diploma in Tropical Medicine from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Nicky Hayward

Nicky Hayward is a retired business woman who sat on a number of government committees for the DTI & DCMS having won the UK Quality Award for Business Excellence and the Queens Award for Sustainable Development. She has travelled extensively in Africa and has taken part in a number of AidCamps International projects in India, Nepal and Cameroon. She is also a trained counsellor.

Nick Hayward

Nick Hayward retired having successfully run a business with his wife Nicky for 25 years. Nick worked with a number of schools and training companies to enable young students, particularly those with special needs, to take part in Modern Apprenticeship schemes. He is also a trustee of the Isle of Wight Youth Trust.

Since our first visit to Cameroon in 2006, we have developed a very strong relationship with our partner, SHUMAS which has enabled the school building programme to develop extremely quickly. We had no idea, in those early days, of the level of response we would receive from supporters in the West.

We pride ourselves on being able to reassure all our funders that every penny they donate to our school building programme goes directly into the construction materials required for hygienic, durable and weatherproof blocks of classrooms and toilets, or reliable clean drinking-water supplies. Because of the contributions that each community is required to make towards the construction of their school, a relatively small amount of money from our funders goes a very long way indeed!

There are still plenty of schools that need our help and we hope that we will be able to continue to provide the small assistance that makes such a difference to the lives of so many deserving children in Africa.

Other SHUMAS staff who are central to our school building projects

Tata Wilfred is the Buildings Manager who undertakes to contract whatever specialist workers are needed when we start constructing a school. Inevitably our funding fluctuates from year to year, and planning a building programme can be a headache - but Wilfred has teams of builders, plasterers and painters that he can call on to undertake the projects as and when they are needed. He is a dedicated supporter of the work SHUMAS and he willingly takes time at each village to encourage the community to help with the work.

Ernest Foncha is SHUMAS' Rural Engineer. He undertakes all the feasibility studies for our water projects and generally has to undertake the construction work as well. This can mean he has to camp out in very remote villages for weeks at a time while a water catchment is constructed and pipeline laid, or a well is dug. With Ernest in charge of this aspect of our work, we know that the water provided to the schools and communities will be good to drink and sustainable. He also provides us with excellent feedback on all the water projects.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 February 2011 )

About Schools for Africa

We started fundraising in April 2007 through AidCamps International, a small London-based charity which has worked closely for many years with SHUMAS, our partner NGO in Cameroon. Our initial aim was to raise the money to rebuild one particular rural primary school, but the response to our appeal was so fantastic that we have continued funding more and more schools.

We concentrate our school-building programme in Cameroon because of our excellent relationship with SHUMAS, whom we know well, and trust. Together we have gradually established 'development packages' for each village we help, in order to ensure that each school is sustainable. Full community participation is required at every stage of the school building project in each village and, as a result, the villagers not only take responsibility for development in their locality but also take real ownership of the completed project.

We are pleased to be able to reassure our funders that the money they donate is making a real difference to the lives of thousands of children in rural Africa.

Building Schools for Africa became a registered charity in January 2009 and our charity number is 1127661

Our Partner organisation, SHUMAS

Stephen Ndzerem

Stephen Ndzerem is the General Co-ordinator of Strategic Humanitarian Services, Cameroon (SHUMAS). SHUMAS was established in 1996 and now has over 40 salaried staff and around 35 volunteers working for the organisation.

Stephen was one of five children, only two of whom survived childhood because extreme poverty in his family meant that his parents could not afford basic medicines when their children fell ill. Stephen's parents were subsistence farmers and his education was periodically disrupted whenever the harvest failed and school fees could not be paid. He eventually studied Law at University but, having practised Law for three years, he decided to establish SHUMAS - a Non Governmental Organisation which specialises in a wide range of sustainable development activities which help to build the capacity of the extremely deprived and marginalised sectors of the communities in Cameroon.

"I will continue to devote my life to helping to create a more just world through sustainable development."

Billian Nyuykighan

Billian is the Project Co-ordinator at SHUMAS. She is responsible for statistical, problem and stakeholder analysis and for formulating project proposals. Billian has many years of experience in development work and is an expert in organic farming and community mobilisation. In 2010 she was invited to speak at an International Conference on Food Security in the Hague.

SHUMAS is focused on sustainable development issues within Cameroon. Their aims include

the reduction of poverty through the empowerment of deprived, poor and marginalised groups.

the promotion of health, education and gender equality,

the promotion of sustainable agricultural activities.

In 2009 SHUMAS opened a Biofarm complex in the NW Province. The aim of this project is to teach sustainable farming techniques to women's groups and young adults who, in turn, teach these techniques to others in their communities, thereby increasing crop yields and reducing their dependence on chemical fertilizers etc.

The Biofarm near Kumbo, NW Province

Visit the SHUMAS website.