During our outreach work in the Siavonga area we stumbled about a sad story that would eventually lead to the establishment of our Girls Secondary School in the Siavonga area.

We learned of a bright young girl who had passed her Grade 7 examinations with great distinctions. She came from one of the villages in Chief Simamba’s area. She was allocated a place at Siavonga High School. However, she could not take up the place because the school had no boarding facility and the distance from her home to school was over 20 km. In the area no public transport is available and roads are very poor, during the rainy season often not even passable.

Girls in the rural areas are often married off very young. She was nearly married off by her family, but she insisted that she wanted to continue with her education.

Eventually a well wisher supported this girl with the little funds to rent a room in Siavonga. This allowed her to start school. However, as a girl she had no protection as she knew it from her village. A few month into her studies she became pregnant and was eventually excluded from school. With a child to take care of she now had no prospect to continue with her education as she did not receive any support from her family in that matter. She got married far to early with no meaningful education to fall back to in the future.

For us at Chreso Ministries, this very emotional story made us see the plight of the girl child in our society. We decided that we would scout for funds and build a secondary school in the very rural area where this happened.

The chief of the area, Chief Simamba was very excited about the project and gave us land right on Lake Kariba to build the school on.

We worked in collaboration with our North Partner in Germany, the Sambia Foerderverein e.V. who was very supportive of this project. Funds were raised by our partner with the support of the “Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development” of Germany (BMZ).

Building of the school started in 2002. Little did we know how challenging it is to build in a rural area of Zambia. Apart from sand and water all other materials has to be transported from Lusaka. In the process we even lost our truck in the mountains when the breaks of the vehicle failed. Nevertheless, we completed the buildings and started with the school program in 2004.

We named the school Mubuyu Christian Academy, after the massive Baobab tree powerfully located in front of our Multipurpose Hall. Mubuyu is the local Tonga name of the Baobab tree.

Since then hundreds of girls have graduated and have gone on to take up powerful positions in Zambia and beyond. In this way, Chreso Ministries has supported the girl child, especially in the rural areas so that they are not left behind in their development.

The first intakes of girls were all fully supported by Chreso Ministries and some of their well wishers. Later we had to introduce school fees. But even now we still support half of the about 250 girls with various scholarships to support their education.

Mubuyu School has always performed in one of the top three places in the Southern Province.