We had an exciting collaboration with students of Emery/Weiner school ending of last school year. 
Eighth grade students at The Emery/Weiner School have spent the month of May raising money to help our school What began as a pen pal project with The Empowering Children and Youth School of Congo Town quickly turned into an opportunity for the students to embrace the true spirit of Tikkun Olam (a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world), which is part of the school’s mission.
One brick At A Time & Key Club
“It is very rewarding to see first-hand the difference we can make in
the world. Children in Congo Town, Sierra Leone will attend school on Monday, May 23rd in their new facility. This is all possible because of the generous fundraising by Florin High students and staff. Community members in Congo Town did not waste any time in putting these funds to good work. They have been working hard to renovate and beautify their new school site to make it ready for students.” MS. Margaret Hoogland
2011 EMPOWERING CHILDREN SCHOOL REPORT
Getting to the new building[Surpported by Florin high
school]
The Congo town community is an isolated area situated in the western area of the capital city of Freetown. It is a very small
community with a massive number of inhabitants. From a summary, we can affirm that the Congo town community lacks the basic human necessities. There are no good roads, only narrow roads. No good housing, no good lavatory facilities and water borne pipes. There is no revenue available in the Congo town community for a hygienic disposal of sewages. Only lately the community has few water pipes that were donated by donors. The community people find it back breaking practice to cope with realities. There is only a primary school in the community where there are no good learning materials
The search for a school structure in the community was a hectic undertaking. We received promises from landlords which in no way turned-up. But eventually we found a building which needed painstaking renovation, such as conducive toilet conveniences, construction of a metal fortify door, five sets of iron bars window, the reconstruction of the ceiling, painting, plastering and the electricians to do a total electric wiring of the building. Initially we only have wood work doors and windows, but the pace at which crime is intensifying in the community and the upcoming of up to date learning equipment, like computers and electrical devices in the school, we consider it fit for safety measures, to modify the wood works to steel. We hired group from different working fields to fast track the redecoration of the building such as carpenters, welders, masonry, electricians and manual laborers.
The welding of the metal doors and windows was done at a 1 mile distance from the school, so it took us almost four days to get the job done. We could not afford the cost involved in hiring a vehicle so we hired a local push cart normally called (omolankay), which transported the metal work to the building.
The community is well
known for it local trench toilets and underprivileged housing structure. About 60% of Freetown environs have no good homes and dumping of rubbish seem so critical. Bags of cement and trips of sand became an issue of compulsory, for the reason that the previous toilet facility was extremely deplorable, so we had to undertake an entire reconstruction.there are no up-to-the-minute school materials such as a television to view documentaries, flipchart, printers and stationeries, but that will come in time–One Brick at a Time.The funds we collected From Florin High played the greatest role and we have developed almost every area concerning the new building.