The children need a classroom...

Ambondromifehy is a small town in northern Madagascar. In 1996, sapphires were discovered there, and although the mines today yield very little, thousands of miners continue to dig, often in perilous conditions, in the hope of making a fortune. It's a 'wild west' town - picture the California gold rush in 1850 and you'll have an idea of how the miners live. For many years, while their parents toiled in the mines, the young children of the town were left to their own devices, running wild in the streets with no school to go to,

On a visit in 2008, Laurette Serybano of the Mothers' Union branch in the regional capital Diego Suarez, pledged to do something about this. In her own words, "I wanted to save the children of sapphire workers who struggle to make a living, and either leave their children in the streets or with neighbours. or take them to the mines which are so unsafe. The children thus have no education, no chance to socialise properly, and have no secure future." Thanks to Laurette's efforts, the Little Sapphires primary school opened in 2011. Today it provides an education to 38 children, aged 4 to 12.

I first met Laurette 20 years ago when I went to Diego Suarez to work with her late husband Alex, Director of the English Department in the local university of Antsiranana. Over the following years, the main focus of my visits was the collaboration with Alex, but when he died I remembered what I'd heard about Laurette's school project, and I got in touch to ask how it was progressing.

"I must say," she wrote back, "that we can't afford any luxuries but the funding we receive through donations is just enough to keep the project going. I would very much like to make improvements but we have to stick to the most essential needs. So far we have a well for water, proper toilets for the children, one for the adults, a kitchen, and two simple classrooms for primary children. Provisionally, we use the church building for the nursery group while we look for funds to build a proper space for them. We can't afford to make improvements because parents are too poor to be able to contribute. All this is to say that any contribution is welcome as there is always something to improve."