In May 2024, Gavin Kibble MBE, set off on a 13 day expedition across the UK, from St. Bee’s Head on the West Coast to Robin Hood’s Bay on the East Coast. In doing so, he raised over £29,000, which paid for the construction of a new classroom block at The Lukkomano Christian Academy in Mazabuka, Zambia.

Eleven months later, Gavin and his wife, Viv, visited the Academy to meet the children and teachers benefiting from the new facilities.

Lukkomano School serves children from extremely impoverished backgrounds, many of whom have been orphaned by the AIDS pandemic and live with relatives struggling to provide basic necessities. The new classrooms were built to accommodate the sheer number of students at the Academy.  With limited teaching space, teaching time for each child had to be halved. The addition of the new “Gavin Kibble Block” has dramatically altered this reality. This expansion is vital, as it allows the school to meet the criteria for specific government funding, further enhancing the resources available to the teachers and children.

“Up to now, they had struggled to provide full-time education for the children because they were so limited by the space,” Gavin explained. He described the experience of seeing the new block as “quite humbling.” For Gavin, connecting his personal fundraising challenge with the tangible benefit for so many children, not just for the current generation but for those to come, made all the effort worthwhile. “It was a huge privilege to meet the children, parents, and teachers,” he added.

Looking ahead, Gavin is already setting his sights on future fundraising goals for the school. “Every time we go over there you see opportunities to carry on developing,” he stated. 

Immediate needs include a technical room with IT facilities to provide computer education for the children, and water storage facilities.