Village of Hope

Jacob’s Well partners with “The Village of Hope”, a boarding school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso that offers places to children from the poorest villages in the country.  These children would otherwise receive no education and consequently have no opportunities in life.  The children’s parents are illiterate, scratching out a meagre living by growing a few crops and raising a handful of animals, just as their fore-fathers have done for hundreds of years.  Each year, the villagers choose some of their children to leave their mud huts and go to live in the “Village of Hope”.  Here they receive a first class education, learning to read and write, and studying maths, physics and all the subjects taught in modern schools.  Jacob’s Well has sent school furniture and equipment to this school and have also sent a bus to help ferry the children from outlying villages to the school at the beginning and end of each school term.  

Children who attend this school have their lives changed forever. They end up strong, healthy and with greatly improved prospects for the future. Today some of the graduates are working as nurses, teachers and accountants, earning enough money to send a generous allowance back to their home village for their relatives.   For those students who are not academically minded, there is a vocational training school.  Using old sewing machines that Jacob’s Well has sent out, they learn to make clothes so that when they leave school, they can earn a living as a seamstress.   The school also teaches cookery, technical skills and hairdressing.