This is where the school was before we got involved. Our school in Bodo originally started with 1 teacher and 4 kids meeting in a house. It was later hosted by St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Bodo. At the time we started helping them, the school’s population had simply outgrown the church’s facilities. What they did was have 4 or 5 groups of students meet inside the church while another group or two waited outside under a tree until it was their turn to go inside and have class. This is what a lack of dedicated classroom space looks like in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Scott and Tijen Pegg met with large number of Bebor students in Bodo for the first time in January 2001.

Before we started helping the school in Bodo, they received a grant from the Canadian consulate general in Lagos that enabled them to begin construction on a 5 classroom primary school building. This is how far they got before we got involved. Notice that only half of the building is roofed.

In January 2001, Scott Pegg presented a check for $2,800 in our first round of funding for the schools to Reverend Moses Nyimale Lezor, the school director (center) while Patrick Naagbanton, the chairman of the school’s board of governors (left) looks on.

The first thing our funding was able to do for the school in Bodo was to finish roofing the primary school building (shown here in 2001) and to put in a cement floor.

This photo shows students having class in the newly finished primary school building in 2001.

Our interventions are meant to be lasting and sustainable. This photo shows kids having class in 2011 in one of the classrooms in the original primary school building we originally finished in 2001.

A science lesson on the blackboard in one of our classrooms, July 2015.

The original zinc roof we put on this first primary school building ultimately rusted through and had to be replaced. This 2011 photo shows local workers preparing to re-roof the building with a new rust-proof aluminum zinc roof that will never need to be replaced.

This photo from June 2012 shows the original primary school building with its now permanent rust-proof aluminum zinc roof.

Our second round of funding for the school in Bodo started construction on what would ultimately become a 6 classroom nursery school building. This is how far they were able to get with our initial funding for this building.

This photo from June 2012 shows the completed nursery school building that has now been re-roofed with a rust-proof aluminum zinc roof that will never need replacing.

Our third and final classroom building in Bodo under construction in August 2005.

Local workers installing a section of the original roof on our third and final classroom building in Bodo.

You can see the extensive rust on our third and final classroom building in Bodo in this June 2012 photo. This is the last roof that we will ever need to replace as our two buildings in Bane and our other two buildings in Bodo already have rust-proof aluminum zinc roofs.

The newly installed rust-proof roof shown from the inside of the assembly hall building in Bodo in July 2015. All seven of our classroom buildings (3 in Bodo, 2 in Bane, 2 in Bori) now have rust-proof roofs that should never need replacing.

Scott Pegg greeting students in Bodo in 2009.

Granted, this is not best practice transportation and it illustrates why the school in Bodo wants a van to transport pupils. Yet, in many ways, this is a measure of our success. Parents from other villages would not send their kids back and forth on motorcycle taxis or “okadas” every day if they didn’t think that our school was offering them a compelling educational value.

We provided the school in Bodo with boys, girls and teachers toilets in 2009. The toilets are in the building with the white paint on it. The cement in the front of the picture covers the waste pit that our toilets flush into.

The entrances to our toilets and shower in Bodo.

One of our three toilets at the school in Bodo. The water that flushes this toilet and comes out of the sink comes from the borehole that our friends at Stepping Stones Nigeria so generously provided to our school in Bodo.

Our borehole pumps water into these two storage tanks from which it then comes down whenever water is needed.

Reverend Moses, the school director looking at a sign above the public water taps thanking our friends and partners at Stepping Stones Nigeria (now Safe Child Africa) who generously funded the school’s borehole.  We remain grateful to them.

These are the two public water taps directly outside our school in Bodo that provide local farmers and villagers with free access to safer and cleaner drinking water that comes from our school’s borehole.  This photo again shows the lasting nature of our investments in the school in that the public water taps opened in 2009 and this photo shows them working and running in 2012.