I, Alan Wolstencroft, a member of Banbury Rotary Club, am undertaking a 20 mile bike ride, on Sunday 10th August, in order to raise funds for my latest "Alans Africa" project, to totally refurbish a 3-classroom block at Kono Town Primary School.

I have not ridden a bike for over 20 years, but have decided to undertake the challenge instead of a sponsored walk which I've done for the last two years. I've borrowed a bike and had it serviced, but when I collected it, I was surprised that they hadn’t fitted stabilisers!!

I first visited this impoverished community school, which receives no government funding, in November 2023 when building the new desperately needed secondary school 200 yards away. The buildings were in a very poor state of repair then, and it has been my intention to support this school since that trip, but with all the development that has taken place at Westminster Community Secondary School I did not have adequate funds to help them.

There are currently 116 children, aged four to eleven, attending classes at the school and these children feed into the new secondary school at 11+.

Things have got progressively worse and came to a head with the onset of the rainy season in the last few weeks. The galvanised zinc roof needs total replacement, as it is more like a colander than a roof!! It is leaking in numerous places and has caused extensive damage to the classroom ceilings, which, as you can see, also need replacement. The ingress of water has also badly affected the general fabric of the building and as a result all the classrooms and the exterior of the teaching block need to be redecorated. There is also a need for extra classroom furniture as not all the children have desks to sit at and proper blackboards are needed in each room as currently the “blackboard” is just an area of the wall which has been painted black – which is not ideal.

The current budget for the project, is £4,725 and £3,500 has been raised so far. We need another £1,225 to meet the target and £1300 will give us just a small amount of contingency.

EVERY £ donated will go directly to the project and help “Make A Real Difference”

About Alan's Africa

I first visited Sierra Leone for 11 days in 2005 as a Rotary volunteer with the charity Mercy Ships, thinking it would be a "one off life experience". The trip was life changing for me and I’ve now been 15 times. In January 2007 I began working directly with a school on the edge of Freetown and set up "Alans Africa” (an approved project of Banbury Rotary Club). Since 2007 we have funded the building of 45 classrooms, a 7-bedroom staff hostel at one of the schools, 10 toilet blocks, sunk 3 wells and re-furbished a further 4; provided a small home for a severely disabled young man, set up a small micro-credit scheme and undertaken many other smaller projects. All of these have made a "real difference" to several impoverished communities in Sierra Leone.

Since January 2007 a total of £430,000 has been raised for the projects.

Thank you for your support.

For further information visit: www.alansafrica.co.uk (Newsletter section)

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