Guardian For A Year

Quality Education is not just about filling classrooms, it’s about pouring into minds and it starts with taking care of these seemingly minor details.

Guardian for a Year, is a solution that aims at helping vulnerable school going children have access to essentials required of them to experience learning with a free mind and have access to quality education because a simple school shirt may stand between a child’s day of learning in school and a day wasted. Presumably minute details such as where children will secure their books on the way to and from school, the uniforms that they wear to the shoes that they put on their feet are overlooked even though they are necessary.  

There are three key players in this project, the vulnerable student, a guardian and Lead Me Back Foundation the three will work hand in hand to make sure the vulnerable child has access to a Bag-Pack which contains a full school uniform, school shoes, a bag, books and other stationery that will be needed in school for a whole academic year. A guardian is any individual or organization that makes a commitment to sponsor at least one child.

The Bag-pack will contain also a STEM box that will help raise awareness in community about STEM, robotics and artificial intelligence and how young people can contribute.

Back to school season for most Zambian families becomes a tradeoff between putting food on the table or buying their children new school uniform, books and other school necessities. Every child has a right to education; not just any education but Quality Education. Receiving quality education goes as far as having a uniform, sufficient stationaries constantly. Unfortunately for most children here in Zambia, financial challenges have denied them the right to quality Education. One example of such a child is Martha.

Martha is a short cheerful grade six pupil in Zambia. She was teased for not having a school bag and carrying her three school books in a plastic carrier bag. At Martha’s school, Mondays are school assembly days and all the pupils line up with their bags in tote. In order to escape the embarrassment of such a situation, Martha always absconded class on Mondays and sat behind her school because the whole class would see her carrier bag. Her three books are barely enough to contain all seven of her subjects and her threadbare gym dress isn’t free from scrutiny from her peers. Martha’s grades haven’t been the best as she is always last in her class and this only dulls her enthusiasm for school

Unfortunately Martha is not the only child facing this hard reality according to UNICEF  44% of Zambian children live in extreme conditions of poverty explaining why  Zambia has a very high fall in secondary school enrollment compared to primary enrollment. 

This project will serve vulnerable primary and secondary school going children in Zambia. Our major focus are students in community schools and children in public schools that are in rural areas. The project will support both girls and boys however, to facilitate Gender equality 60% of the children under the project will be girls.

 Unfortunately, because of high levels of household poverty many school going children in Zambia fail to have access to school necessities as a result many of them either fail in school or even give up and just dropout of school.

An example of such a child is Yvonne. She is a 13 year old student at Mwaiseni Community School in Ndola, Zambia. She lives in a child headed household because her aunt who was their Guardian left in January, 2020. As a result Yvonne everyday after school goes out in the community to do piece works so she can raise money for the necessities she need and her other two siblings.

Yvonne is not the only child experiencing these disheartening situation their many children in Zambia with stories similar and even worse than Yvonne's stories. As Lead Me Back Foundation these are the stories we want to serve. These  are the children our project want to help in 2022and many more years beyond.

The Bag-Pack package will allow children like Yvonne concentrate on school and not worry about finding money to buy a school uniform or school books  because this is already provided. 

As Lead Me Back Foundation in November 2021, we went out in the community to make sure we see these children and have conversations with them. We went to the schools that we identified to work with in 2022 to meet the headteachers of the schools and the guidance and counselling teachers to get more information about the challenges these vulnerable children face in their schools. This outreach helped us understand on a deep level the challenges and how just a simple school shirt can stand between a child's day spent learning or a day wasted.

In January, 2022 at the start of the academic year, we are going back to the communities to have interactive sessions with the children we plan to sponsor with their parents/guardians. Through these sessions we will listen to them explain their stories, the challenges they face and where they are coming from as this will allow us to even have a deeper understanding about the challenges these vulnerable school going children face.

Our Executive Director Mr. Genesis Mwamba volunteered as an online tutor for Genius Education Zambia during the COVID-19 pandemic and from his experience the major challenge that he identified was financial challenges. Unfortunately, children coming from these community schools failed to have access to this innovation simply because they can't afford a smart phone and  we learnt from this and we want to change these stories in 2022.

Guardian for a Year is launching its Bagpack package for the first time in five towns across the country of Zambia. Namely; Ndola, Kitwe, Lusaka,(major cities), Chingola and Mwinilunga (semi-urban towns). The team will work in tandem with community and public schools and sponsors to provide the items within the Bagpack to 500 children spread across the country in 2022 and more beyond.

Guardian for a Year is a project that thrives on communication. Telecommunication will be a key aspect of the operations from communicating with sponsors and students to tracking students' progress and mobilizing resources. Social media is also invaluable in that awareness of the challenges within the community rallies individuals around one cause; providing access to Quality Education. As our reach broadens, our cause andd its importance is intensified.

Our GoFundMe: guardian-for-a-year-lmb-foundation

Facebook: Lead-Me-Back-Foundation-105311958538234

Twitter pages: Lead Me Back Foundation (@leadmeback21) / Twitterhttps://mobile.twitter.com › leadmeback21

The Guardian for a Year project aims to reach at least 500 students by connecting them to 500 sponsors (Guardians). These will provide the funds needed to supply the tools for the students to access a quality education otherwise unavailable to them.

As a youth initiative, the Project aims to empower the younger and less privileged in our communities so that they pursue their schooling unhindered. As much as can be provide, will be. We hope that in doing the work we've embarked on, we can expose areas in our lives where we can give more from what we have. We hope to inspire others to consider what we've  come to call our 'Core Values'; namely, Sacrifice, Generosity, Innovativeness, Integrity and Passion. 

By linking students and Guardians, maintaining their correspondence and tracking the students' progress, we hope to build lasting connections that ultimately shine as examples of how we as ordinary individuals can do extraordinary good.

Using Project SMART goals; that is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely, our tracking consists of:

-Number of Students aided- in 2022, we aim at 500 students.

-Number of Guardians registered- as of January 2022, ..

-Progress of student, Number of school days missed compared to previous school years. School performance.

Financially; reliance on crowd-sourced funds and corporate/individual donors  has been and continues to be a process of maintaining a sense of urgency among sponsors as well as concern for the students. Multiple fundraising and investment opportunities remain essential to the project's operations.

Legally, the stakeholders involved each must consent to the extent of the aid needed and granted. There are no foreseeable cultural or technical barriers.

The Guardian for a year team is filled with young undergraduates and professionals who are committed to the revolutionization of quality Education in Zambia. On our team we have Miss Jessica Chisompola a Strategic partnership and Digital financial services expert. Miss Chisompola has been mentoring the entire team on resource mobilization and how to establish effective partnerships that will profit the project and the entire Lead Me Back Foundation at large.

Through these classes we have been able to establish a strong relationship with the community we plan to serve in this project. We have started going back to the community to learn in details where these children are coming from and if we find that a house has more than one vulnerable child we plan to take up all the children and put them on the Guardian for year project.

We have members on the team who volunteered with Genius Education Zambia an organization that focus on Science Technology Engineering and Mathematic(STEM) and this has mightily helped  our team to understand students from different town and how much exposure they have towards STEM. Through volunteering we have understood the challenges that the process come with and we have started implementing some of the ideas we had.

We also have experienced social media influencers and this has helped us increase our social media presence and reach. It has given us the opportunity to reach out to more people on our different platforms and engage with our community. We have also learnt from our social media community in areas that we are lacking and how we can improve in these areas to make sure our project is as effective as possible.

We have partnered with World Merit an organization in the United States of America. From the beginning of the project up to date they have been offering mentorship and guidance to the entire Guardian for year team. They have also been helping us pitch our idea with different organizations that can help with the project.

World Merit has also extended their platforms and given us opportunities to appear on their different publicity platforms to allow us share our project and reach out to their audience.

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We qualify for the Pozen social innovation Prize because our project aims to improve the learning process of vulnerable children especially girls. 60% of the project is reserved specifically for the vulnerable school going girls in Zambia. We equally target rural areas as most girls living in rural areas in Zambia fail to have access to education, let alone what we've come to define as Quality Education. An example of such a child is Chikondi:

Chikondi is a 5th grader with hopes of becoming a lawyer someday. She loves to learn and looks forward to going to school every morning. However, lately she has been feeling not so motivated to go to class because she has no school books to write in. Worse off, she has to carry her books in a plastic bag because her parents who are unemployed are unable to provide her with these items. Her only uniform has started to get torn from three years of use. This has lowered her self-esteem as she is constantly comparing herself to her classmates. This in turn has greatly affected her performance in class.

As Lead Me Back Foundation, we not only believe in the right to education but to quality education. We would like to see children like Chikondi have the full experience of their education because Quality education is not just about filling up classrooms it's about pouring into mind. This will enable them to change the lives of their families and communities around them.

We are extremely touched when we see such stories and fiercely emboldened in our cause to create change and make learning opportunities accessible to the vast majority of students that are otherwise unable to support themselves.