Small Business Support

Rich purchases fritters - the Zambian equivalent of donuts - from a local tuck shop, aka Zambian 7-11 ! Several of these small shops in the community have been successfully started by women through interest-free loans from the SPF community support fund.

Orhpans Assisted

The team helped present new school uniforms and school supplies to some of the orphans that needed them.

Chilunga Renovations

Today the team loaded up the pick-up with tools and supplies and headed to Chilunga Community School to do some basic renovations for them.


While the women and the girls helped re-paint the chalk boards and decorate the outside of the school ......

.... Rich and James constructed and installed some doors on the classrooms

Desk Rebuilding

Funds were raised by Living Waters Christian Academy in Spruce Grove, Canada for the refurbishing of desks at Sungula School. This task was tackled by Rich and James who came up with an innovative plan to use the old metal desk frames to build larger, sturdier desks in a cost effective way.

The whole team - all who have been involved at Living Waters - had a hand to play in the desk project.

The completed desks - 20 of them providing seating for some 100 students !

The Roof - Phase 2

Rich decided to add a porch to the front of old man's house to provide shelter from the rain and wind. A portable generator was taken on the back of the pich-up to provide power for the saw.



The roof was constructed on the ground and then lifted into place by several helpers ! The Zambians were very impressed with this innovation

Teachers Workshop

Jenny, Leah and Carrie organized and presented a one-day workshop for teachers from Sungula and Chilunga which was held at the farmhouse base. It was much appreciated by those who attended and a very beneficial to them all.

Note : the three teachers from Chilunga had to get up at 4:30 a.m. in the morning to ride their bicycles to get to the farm in time for the start ! At the end of the day Gordon drove them back to their homes some 20 km away - quite a feat along narrow bush tracks and across several streams.

Taylor House Opening/Handover

Although the staff house, built with funds provided by the Taylor Team who were here in May, is not totally complete we had set today as the day for an opening/handover ceremony as it was the last day of school before a four-week break and our last opportunity to have such an event with all the staff and pupils as we leave before school opens again. We also felt that it would be good for our final Canadian team here to participate.

It turned into quite the event with virtually the whole community being invited out for the festivities which started in the late morning and continued on for several hours !

Entertainment by the school Cultural Club (above) doing traditional dancing and the Drama Club (below) doing skits - several performances each throughout the afternoon

Women from the community also did displays of traditional dancing - above and below

Grade 9 students present dramatical poems and dialogue (above) and the school choir (below)sang beautifully throughout the afternoon

Several speeches were made to the assembled audience and invited guests

The school head, Kerby (above) and senior headman, Jackson (below) address the gathering

Guest of honour and keynote speaker the District Commissioner (equivalent of county reeve/mayor) for Kapiri Mposhi presents his speech

Jenny and vice-head, Stellah, (above) wait for special guests to complete their tour of the house before the ribbon cutting and then Jenny and the DC cut the ribbon (below)

A framed inscription was presented to Kerby to eventually be hung in the house when occupied. The text reads :

"Funding for this House was provided by Taylor University College Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,
and handed over to Sungula Basic School on August 1st, 2008 by The Simon Poultney Foundation.

May God bless this home and everyone who passes through it."

The event was a wonderful ocasion with excellent perfomances and speeches and thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.

Community Outreach

Today members of the team visited Shipungu Community School which has about 150 students in Grades 1 to 6 and is staffed by four volunteer teachers. Sports items and teacher resources, donated in Canada, were given to the school


The ladies and girls joined a community women's club for their regular meeting where they handed out knitting and sewing supplies brought from Canada

Let There Be Light

We were very fortunate to have Rich's mechanical skills here when the generator engine went down and he was able to carry out the required repairs on it so that we could have power again

Roof Goes On

We brought the material with us to the site and found that the old roof was already off and waiting for us to get started


Work gets under way with help from the home owner and some friends from the community. Rich was pounding nails while James had the tough job of hand-sawing the timbers, ably observed by Gordon !


Work continues on the back side of the house - the brick work will be dealt with by the owner


Rich climbs up on the roof to nail into the centre beam


The team celebrates the completion of phase 1