BURKINA DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP NIC 101575
ADDRESS: 3 GORSEHILL ROAD, MONEYREAGH, NEWTOWNARDS, BT23 6XE
Our Public Benefit Statement
The Advancement of Education
The benefit we provide is an education in a country where a large proportion of the population have no access to education because of a serious shortage of places within the state system due to the poverty within the country. The direct benefits we provide are the 800 plus school places from the building of schools. The exceptional exam results achieved which are far superior to the state run schools. This benefits directly all the children living in the catchment area of the schools.
The Prevention or Relief of Poverty
Education is seen as the best way to break free from poverty within the country. We also run a feeding programme for all children accepted into school and for many of these children this is their main source of nutrition. The charity's beneficiaries are all the children given a school place.
The Advancement of Health
We offer basic healthcare to all children accepted into the school. This includes medication when they are ill and we now have a nurse in attendance at the school with his own treatment room. The feeding programme also improves general health. This can be demonstrated by comparing children at the school with the other children in the area not at school.
TRUSTEES ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 01 MAY 2018 TO 30[TH] APRIL 2019
Unfortunately things have continued to deteriorate in the country of Burkina Faso where our focus is. Terrorism abounds on almost a weekly basis and it is now unsafe to go there with the Foreign Office advising against all but essential travel to the country. Therefore we are unable to visit and take our usual photos for sponsors or take any building teams. It is therefore proving more difficult to provide the regular information to our sponsors we would like. On the plus side, Grace School has been unaffected, even though hundreds of schools are being forced to close in the north of the country.
We are so thankful to our sponsors for their continued loyalty and support through this very difficult time. We are blessed to have excellent teachers in the nursery, primary, and secondary schools and this gives us optimism for the future.
Most of the money we raise comes from child sponsorship for Grace School in Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in the country. Over the past 13 or 14 years we have built a nursery school, a primary school, and a secondary school. In the past year we have added a further 50 children to the school in the new P1 class. This brings the total number of children we are educating to approx 800.
The school has an exceptional reputation in the area with parents sleeping in the grounds of the school for days, ahead of the date when we start excepting children for the next school year. This is in the hope that we can provide a place for their child.
Every child in Burkina has to sit an exam at the end of primary level education. This exam is set by the Dept of Education and has to be passed to progress to secondary level. This year again we had a 100% pass rate. So far we have been able to get every child through this exam, which is almost unheard of, and is down to the commitment of all the teachers involved.
This was the third year that the secondary school had children old enough to sit the equivalent of GCSE’s. 68 per cent of the children passed which was considerably better than state schools where the pass rate is around 35 per cent. The teachers are working extremely hard to do even better next year. Our aim is that through education these children will be able to break free from the poverty that they live in. Next year some of our oldest kids will be leaving us to go to university which we are delighted about.
The vast bulk of the funds we raise annually comes from our child sponsorship programme and around £50k is sent out to cover this. Each child gets a school uniform, a school dinner every day and part or all of their fees paid. We also provide basic healthcare should the child be ill. All of this is in line with our public benefit responsibilities.
We our unashamedly a Christian School although most of the children come from either a Muslim or an Animistic background.
We also raised the funds to put a well in the grounds of the school. Solar panels are used to power a pump. This is making a big difference, as providing enough water for 800 on a daily basis was proving costly. Also we are now free from the daily supply being turned off.
Our financial position is healthy. Nobody involved receives any money from the charity. When we are able to travel, everyone funds the costs of their own travel to and from Burkina and the only expenses we have are postage, bank fees and other very small outgoings. We have no debt. We have funds in reserve but this will be needed as we roll out electricity for the whole school.
In all of our financial decisions this year the trustees have taken seriously the regard we take for the Charity Commission’s Public benefit statutory requirements.
Burkina Development Partnership is set up under a trust deed and our objects are clearly defined as “established to support by means of financial assistance any charitable project for the protection and preservation of health, the relief of poverty or the advancement of education in Burkina Faso and its environs of West Africa.”
Nigel Graham
Trustee of BDP