When Dorothy Nsuuma started Crown of Life School in 2004 with just 15 pupils in a single class, she couldn’t have imagined how the school would grow to over 600 pupils up to Grade 12 on a new site.

When Mission Direct first met Dorothy in 2009, there were 300 children at the school, meeting in a cramped church hall. With substantial funding from Christ Church in St Albans, a new school was built between 2010 and 2012 on a green field site on the edge of Lusaka. Since then, the school has added more classrooms funded by Mission Direct volunteers, allowing the school to expand to include secondary grades from 8 to 12. Recently, the school opened a Science Laboratory and Administration Block funded by Christ Church. The school also offers Catering and Computing 1-year courses leading to a recognised qualification.

Crown of Life School serves the shanty compound of Ng’ombe and the nearby communities of Foxdale and Meanwood, which are being overtaken by the outward growth of Lusaka. The school has an excellent academic record, with most pupils passing their grade 7 examinations (equivalent to our 11 plus) in recent years. School fees are about £12 a month for primary grades and £15 for secondary, but many parents cannot afford to pay. In fact, about a third of the pupils at the school do not pay fees and many pupils are supported through sponsorship schemes.

In 2026, Mission Direct plans to continue developing the school, by improving the facilities of the nursery school. The school currently has three small rooms, the plan is to build two full size classrooms to provide better facilites and to allow the expansion of the nursery section.

We also plan to paint the new nursery classrooms built at Kiine School in 2025, and to repaint classrooms at Kumbaya School, last decorated several years ago.

The estimated cost of the planned building works is £22,000 and the painting is £2,000.