The Year Two project report and Year Three Budget was submitted in early July. An abbreviated version is here. It is a good report, with significant growth of the project and progress towards the stated goals. Some highlights of the report:

• Pre-school: 23 groups with a total of 411 children enrolled
• School Tutorials: 23 groups with a total of 423 children enrolled
• Adult Groups: 48 groups, with 68 men and 858 women taking part.

The adult groups begin with literacy classes, then move on to Livelihood Skills (training in poultry, livestock, fish farming, gardening and handcrafts), primary health care, environment issues and human rights. The groups (both adult and child) are spread across the 12 project villages.

"All roof trusses up last nite, corrugated iron roofing going on now, all rubbish off site & things look so good"!

That was the text message in this morning from a member of the team from Christchurch that is helping with the Satitoa School building project.

Work on the Satitoa School is racing along. In November 2009 when the Baptist team took in the containers of goods that had been donated all that was left of the old school was the foundations. The village (quite naturally!) wanted to move away from the coast. We were shown the new site that they were proposing. Covered in trees and undergrowth it was hard to visualise what could be there. 

There was a period of months where nothing visible seemed to be happening – but behind the scenes Phil, Nigel and the team were busy with plans. Draft plans taken to Samoa in December had to be changed as we consulted with the Education Ministry and with the community. By March we had a full set of revised plans, but the cost of these was looking impossible.