Charity

The Sabre Charitable Trust

The Sabre Charitable Trust is a small charity working on a big issue: Education. Through our Whole School Improvement Programme we are working with the local education authorities to make school a better place for Ghanaian children and encourage them to stay in education for longer.

By building and improving schools, ensuring that sufficient teaching and learning materials are available and supporting fun extra curricular activities, we are helping to build a better future for school children in Ghana.

Current Kinder Since its creation, the Sabre Trust has focused its attention on the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) District in Ghana’s Central Region. KEEA District has a rich cultural heritage, being home to two UNESCO World Heritage sites, but it suffers from all of the typical socio-economic development problems that afflict much of rural Ghana. The poverty of the district is reflected in the lack of resources to support education and youth initiatives – rural schools typically lack teaching and learning materials, and many school buildings are in need of significant infrastructure improvements.

Read more here - http://sabretrust.org/charity_about.php

The Sabre Charitable Trust has been chosen by Richard’s employer, Davis Langdon LLP, as the firm’s charity of the year for 2008 – 2010 following a voting poll held amongst the firms UK employees. In partnership with Davis Langdon, the charity will be furthering its support to the kindergarten sector in Ghana through the development of a sustainable kindergarten school, and offering staff the opportunity to travel to Ghana and help build the pilot school.

The Sustainable Kindergarten Project

In its 2007 Education Reform, the Ghana Education Service formally included two years of kindergarten schooling in the basic education system. This was an important policy change which recognised the compelling case for investing in kindergarten teaching: many young Ghanaians begin primary school without a solid foundation in literacy or numeracy, which in turn leads to high failure rates, and children being held back year after year.

Julies Pic 514 Historically, the kindergarten sector has been woefully underfunded: in many communities there are no dedicated classrooms, the children are taught under trees by community teachers who have never received formal training and, without even basic government funding, no learning resources are available for the children's use. With pro bono design and project management support from global and local construction consultancies, led by Davis Langdon LLP and Arup, the Sabre Trust is proposing to begin tackling this huge shortage of kindergarten infrastructure, by designing and building a new prototype school for Ghana.

By drawing on a combination of international and Ghanaian construction expertise, the project has delivered a locally appropriate design, informed by the latest engineering concepts and analysis. In developing the design, the consultant team have been guided by four key principles:

• the design must be performance based

• the design should make use of locally sourced sustainable materials

• the design must respond to the educational aspirations of the kindergarten curriculum

• the design should be scalable and adaptable to individual community needs and demographics

The resultant kindergarten school is one which delivers a significantly more comfortable learning environment, providing the flexibility of teaching space to support the government curriculum, and reducing the carbon footprint of schools by moving away from the conventional reliance on concrete and cement. Each school will be built for a budget of £40,000, at a lower cost per child than the current government model school, delivering greater value for money and making scarce resources go further.

Richard’s goal is to raise at least enough money from his Solo RAAM challenge to completely build one of these sustainable kindergarten schools in Ghana.

Donate now: http://www.justgiving.com/richardneweyraam2009