For years, Kandas had been a temporary settlement, a stopping-off place. Parents would seek work in other provinces, take their older children along with them to work in the fields, and leave the younger kids behind in the care of fragile older folks.
Which meant that, for the most part, kids didn’t stay in school. Our representative, with help, constructed a one-room school in Kandas and succeeded in getting the government to send in a part-time teacher.
Since then, young people and teachers from Emanuel Christian School in Broyouk visit Kandas on alternate weeks. Our efforts to help “make a place” seem to be working. Older kids have begun to stay home. And stay in school.
This big brother-big sister effort will help develop local leadership, teamwork, and responsibility. Budding Kandas youth leaders have an impressive to-do list: lice prevention, personal hygiene, and community sanitation.
Our recently-completed outdoor shelter in Kandas will serve as an additional community-builder: The kids can play even when it’s raining; when the annual floods come, it will serve as an evacuation center.