Teaching Vulnerable Children in Rural Zambia

Florence, left, teaches science at The Great Ones Pre-School in Mpika, Zambia. (Screen shot from the film "The Great Ones Pre-School")

The 11 young women who run The Great Ones Pre-School exemplify the old proverb, "Give a person a fish and they eat for a day. Teach a person to fish and they eat for life." Esnart, Naomi, and their colleagues grew up poor in rural Zambia. Many of them lost one or both parents, leaving their guardians struggling to pay school fees, according to this case study from the University of Pennsylvania. Then they received leadership and entrepreneurship training -- the ability to fish, so to speak -- from Camfed, an organization that educates and empowers girls to be leaders. They decided to open a pre-school for vulnerable children -- kids who lived just like they did years earlier -- and they now teach 52 students.

"A lot of people say that if you are poor, there is nothing you can do in the future," says Naomi, in the film below. "What I have learned is that even if you are poor, you can do something in your life. At least in the future, you can learn, and you can become somebody one day."

Watch the short video to learn more about The Great Ones Pre-School.

This story is part of our Wednesday ViewChange video series.

  Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World.