Load up for Africa

By Casey Neill
AN UPWEY group is a step closer to making a difference for the people of a Zambian village following the arrival of a shipping container last Tuesday (5 February).
Margaret Collette is the organiser of the Chibobo Container Project.
Students from Upwey High School and Upwey Primary School are collecting basic school and agricultural supplies to send to the African village of Chibobo.
The group bought the container at the discounted price of $1600 thanks to the father of an Upwey Primary School student.
Mark Roberts read about the project in the school newsletter his daughter Rhiannon bought home and put the group in contact with ANL Containers.
The group raised $2125 from an auction held on 27 November last year with the help of a $1000 donation from the Shire of Yarra Ranges.
Ms Collette thanked the shire, particularly Streeton Ward councillor Noel Cliff.
“We’re so grateful to the shire because this is the reason the container is there,” she said.
Students and teachers are making toys, drawings and paintings to send over.
School desks, tables and books will also come from the school.
Ms Collette said the local community has also got behind the project.
Computers, sewing machines, bikes and kids’ clothes have all been donated by local businesses.
“They’ve just been fabulous,” she said.
The group is still looking for mattresses, household, school and gardening equipment, paper, pens and carpentry tools.
Ms Collette said the items would make an “absolutely amazing difference”.
The new agricultural equipment would give Chibobo the ability to grow more maize, while sewing machines offer another business opportunities.
There are 85 orphans living in Chibobo. Ms Collette was inspired to start the project after a visit to Chibobo eight years ago.
She modelled the group on Tasmanian organisation Care for Africa Foundation.
Their next challenge is finding the money to fly two students and a teacher to Africa to meet the container and help unpack it.
“It’s about opportunity for students and what can be gained in going across and looking at a village in another part of the world who think differently, whose lives have been organised differently, who are culturally different, economically different,” she said.
The high school will have an out of uniform day on Friday 15 February and a second auction is planned for 11 April.