African Education Outreach: Humble Beginnings

Tuesday | March 31, 2020 | 21:36 PM

African Education Outreach was born out of a personal experience of JohnBosco Ikemeh, a catholic priest from Nigeria who lives and works in Charleston South Carolina, USA.

	The sight of those children doing what he did several years ago moved him to want to give back, to help make their lives better. He became determined to build a school in that community.
	“It took me another three years to realize that I could not do it alone, that I have been called to walk with others in doing good work, the work of God.”
This led to the founding of African Education Outreach (AEO), a 501(c)3 organization, whose mission is to create and maintain a quality, welcoming educational K-12 Campus in Nigeria. JohnBosco called a group of his friends and shared with them his inspiration, dreams and vision for the school, at end of that meeting in April 2014, African Education Outreach was born.
	Our project started on some 10 acres of land in the middle of a farming community in Abakaliki with no access road and no drinking water. In February 2016, we embarked on constructing an access road and built a bridge across the rice swamp, giving them access to Abakaliki city that is only ten miles away.
	With the access road to our school land in place a bigger obstacle arose, the community has no water.

The villagers depended on rainwater that filled the creeks for their needs. Unfortunately, as soon as the rain ends in October, the people face six months of drought--no rain, no water. AEO sank two bore-well to provide water for both the community and for our project.

We have since constructed a privacy wall around the property for the security of our students. We have built six classrooms, the first floor of the classroom building.

This has made it possible for us to open our doors to some 67 students this past fall, 21 in the 7th grade and the rest in K to 1st grade. There are eleven staff members on board. We are about to complete the first floor of girls’ hostel that will accommodate about 40 students.
	We had the blessing of shipping a 40ft container of school supplies including desk, chairs, and books.
The administrative building is ready for use even as we hope to do the painting in a later time. We broke grounds for the nun’s convent, and lay teachers’ residence, the boys’ dormitory and the kitchen/dining. Our goal is to raise the foundation to make it easy to build even during the raining season that is around the corner.
	Thanks to your generosity we have accomplished a lot to earn us initial approval from the ministry of Education. But we must work to get the final approval otherwise we will lose the initial approval. We urgently need to meet the requirement for the final approval. We must have science and computer laboratories, examination hall, student hostel and sports facilities. We have initiated these as you can see in the pictures, but we need to complete. Would you be willing to chip in a little more to help us accomplish this goal?

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