20 Nov 2024

Love Botswana Outreach Mission and its partners have embarked on an educational project dubbed ‘Legacy 40/40 playgrounds’, an initiative aimed to enhance quality of education and celebrate the organisation’s upcoming 40^th anniversary in 2027.

The Maun based organisation kick-started the Legacy 40/40 playgrounds project by launching the first legacy playground at Mathiba Primary School on Tuesday.

Giving an overview, the founder of Love Botswana, Dr Jana Lackey said the project marked the first of the 40 playgrounds that they would construct in primary schools throughout the Ngamiland region.

The project, she said was dedicated to enhancing the well-being and development of children in the North West and Okavango districts.

“I and my husband, Dr Jerry Lackey had a vision for playgrounds and we are grateful that our dream has come true. I will like to thank the ministry of Child Welfare and Basic Education for acceding us the permission to work with primary schools,” she added.

Dr Lackey further said they were about to celebrate their 40 years anniversary of living in Botswana and 25 years of serving communities through various faith based initiatives.

The Love Botswana Outreach Mission  had supported and developed students’ full potential through faith based education and supplementary learning programmes.

They have also played role in empowering families and communities to develop self-sustainability through skills training and micro-enterprise development.

The organisation’s co-founder Dr Jerry Lackey shared that their ministry was founded in 1987 to advance the Kingdom of God by teaching and demonstrating the gospel around the world.

“We are very proud to be part of this great nation and for contributing significantly towards development of this beautiful area through our faith based programmed which aimed to complement the government and impact the communities,” he said.

However, he shared that the 40/40 playgrounds project was motivated by his love for children as future leaders.

Dr Jerry said the playgrounds were donated by a Texas based organisation that builds modern playgrounds for kids indicating that they had already completed building playgrounds in four primary schools of Matlapana, Shashe, Gxhabara and Mathiba with 36 more to go before the 40^th anniversary.

North West regional education director, Ms Veronica Mochotli appreciated the gesture saying it would add value to quality education.

The ministry, she said had a mammoth task of ensuring all children had equitable access to quality education and noted that stakeholder collaboration was key toward achieving that.

“When we talk quality education we also include infrastructure and this project will indeed help us to achieve our mandate,” she added calling on the school management to develop a timetable to ensure every child formally utilised the playground.

Furthermore, Ms Mochotli pointed out that the ministry had transformed education to be outcome based adding that going forward, learners should be given time to do physical activity.

The school head, Mr Ntsholetsang Tebelelo hailed the ministry for partnering with the organisation  and acknowledged that the modern playground came with benefits for learners citing cognitive development, social development, creativity and building a sense of cooperation.

He promised that they would ensure every learner had a chance to utilise the playground. Ends