We are pleased to be able to share with you a new short film that we have produced. It is only three minutes long but hopefully gives a flavour of the work of Savannah Education Trust.
This is the first of a number of short videos that we hope to produce (the next will be on the Christian aspects of the work).
This is a recording of an online talk held in March 2025, providing an update on the work of Savannah.
Thank you for your interest in the work.
We hope to hold an online talk on Saturday 8 March at 7.30 pm (UK time). This is an opportunity, if the Lord will, for us to update you on developments in Ghana and outline the future plans for the work.
Please save the date and join the meeting using the link below:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/
If you have any questions in the meantime, please do feel free to contact us.
Savannah Education Trust is a charity providing an education for some of the poorest children in West Africa. We now have ten Christian schools in northern Ghana in the villages of Bagri, Gberi, Korh, Pavuu, Mettoh, Tungan-Zagkpee, Boo, Baapari, Danko-Buree and Lyssah. The charity also ensures every schoolchild receives a meal each day and has a programme to support teachers in this remote and poor area.
Dear Supporters,
There is something unforgettable about the first visit to a Savannah school: driving through the green landscape, seeing the first glimpse of the blue walls and hearing the first happy sound of children’s voices.
When some of our trustees visited Ghana for the first time, they were struck by something else too – the dedication and enthusiasm of the students. At Bagri Primary School, the first school built by Savannah, we arrived in the middle of a national teacher strike. Despite this, the children had come into school to revise for their end of year exams coming up later in the week.
Even more striking than the wish to be in school was a group of boys, under the shadow of the eaves, repairing a broken classroom desk. Their care for their school was obvious. They were spending their spare moments in maintenance work, Sammy, who is 12, was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Before the school was built, his answer would have been predictable: the hard slog of a life of subsistence farming. But his eyes lit up as he said, “a carpenter – so I can build schools.”
At this time of year, we particularly remember the coming of the Lord Jesus who humbled himself to such an extent that the people dismissively asked, “Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3). But we also take a moment at the end of the year to reflect on all that has happened to the charity to the year: the hundreds of lessons taught and the thousands of meals served. And we think of children like Sammy who are now benefitting from a school. They have the opportunity to dream: whether, as in Sammy’s case, of running a small carpentry business or, like other children at Bagri, becoming medics and teachers, mechanics and entrepreneurs. Now they also have a greater blessing than decent education and future dreams: the hope of the gospel.
Those children gathered in the eaves of Bagri School are not able to thank you personally. It is our greatest privilege to be able to do so on their behalf. When we look at these children and their bright hopes for the future, we know that none of it would be possible without our supporters.
We shared in our most recent newsletter, that our needs are greater than ever and our finances more challenging than at any stage in our two-decade history. Your support is very precious to us.
We join with all of our friends in Ghana in wishing you a very happy Christmas and God’s blessing during 2025.
On behalf of the trustees, and with our thanks,
Paul Ramsbottom
Savannah Education Trust is a charity providing an education for some of the poorest children in West Africa. We now have ten Christian schools in remote villages in northern Ghana: Bagri, Gberi, Korh, Pavuu, Mettoh, Tungan-Zagkpee, Boo, Baapari, Danko-Buree and Lyssah. The charity also ensures every schoolchild receives a meal each day and has a programme of supporting teachers in this remote and poor area.
On Saturday 27 January 2024 we held an online talk to provide an update on the work. You can watch a recording of the talk above.
In the talk we reference our short film ‘Children of the Savannah’ which can be watched here.
Thank you for your interest in the work.
Savannah Education Trust is a charity providing an education for some of the poorest children in West Africa. We now have ten Christian schools in northern Ghana in the villages of Bagri, Gberi, Korh, Pavuu, Mettoh, Tungan-Zagkpee, Boo, Baapari, Danko-Buree and Lyssah. The charity also ensures every schoolchild receives a meal each day and has a programme to support teachers in this remote and poor area.
Dear Supporters,
We often wish that we could take you each to the savannah land of northern Ghana, and to show the effect of the work that you are supporting.
It can be seen in the bright blue buildings that you can see scattered through the countryside – Christian schools now spreading hope across ten different villages. It can be traced out through the statistics: several thousand pupils enjoying an education across hundreds of square miles; several hundred teachers benefiting from employment; several dozen individuals currently undertaking teacher training with the help of our scholarships.
Above all, no doubt, you would see the impact of Savannah through the individual lives touched, and the individual lives changed. And so over the years – unable to transport you to this remote part of Africa – we have tried each Christmas letter to relate the story of one individual.
It is hard to believe that this is our 18th such letter. On a recent visit to Ghana, we met two of the children who have featured across the years. We thought that you might find their stories encouraging.
The first meeting was unexpected. We happened to be in Ghana for the sitting of the national examinations (equivalent of British GCSEs) in October. In the market town of Lawra, hundreds of children from schools across the area congregated outside exam halls. Among the many nervous pupils, we found it strangely moving to catch glimpses of “our” children – all smartly dressed in bright blue. And there, among them, was a familiar face. Pedalling up the dirt track was Beri Banguu. He parked his wheelchair bike outside the exam room, and was able to clamber up the few steps to sit his papers. It was the happiest of reunions, and as he later set off to cycle back to his village, he told us that the exam seemed to go well.
Beri’s story is told in a short video on our website. He lives in Gberi village and has been severely disabled from birth. Once he spent his days crawling in the dirt — with little hope for the future. Then one day some Savannah workers came to his house. Beri had seen a blue school being built, just close to his house. But he had not dared to hope that the school was for him, as well as for all of the other children.
Now, with the help of the Christian education provided by our school in Gberi – and with an adapted wheelchair provided by Savannah – his live is very different. He is independent, travelling on his own from his village to Lawra. And he is able to join the other children in taking his school exams.
Daafah Pagyel is older than Beri. He is from Bagri and was part of that first generation of children thrilled to witness the opening of the blue Christian school in 2006: our very first village school. At first glance, unlike Beri, he seems just like every other child. But his world is entirely silent; indeed he has known nothing but silence as he was born profoundly deaf. To make his early life even more difficult, his father died when he was a toddler.
It is hard to describe the thrill of that first ever generation to attend school. Yet it was less thrilling for Daafah, and it soon became clear that he would need further help. Through support from Savannah he was able to attend a specialist school in the regional capital, Wa (staying with a Baptist deacon and his family while away from home).
It is strange to think that children like Daafah, who we met on our first visits and who helped to inspire the work of Savannah, are no longer toddlers but are in their 20s. Daafah, having successfully completed his education and some vocational training, is now working as a mason – helping with construction projects across the area. Indeed he has teamed up with a number of his fellow pupils to form a band of deaf masons who travel around following the work together.
It has been another busy year for the charity. As we look to the future, we think about those many children, following after Beri and Daafah, who continue to be helped by Savannah – and those who have not yet known this benefit. We are ever more dependent on your support as the work expands. We are also ever more dependent on prayer that the Lord would continue to bless the work for both the physical and spiritual benefit of these remote communities.
Beri and Daafah are not able to thank you personally. We count it an immense privilege to do so on their behalf. We are thankful and excited by all that has happened. It is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes (Psalm 118). Please be assured that your support is greatly valued and is going directly to help another generation of children like Beri and Daafah.
We join with all of our friends in Ghana in wishing you a very happy Christmas and God’s blessing during 2023.
On behalf of the trustees, and with our thanks,
Paul Ramsbottom
The Savannah Education Trust is a charity set up to provide an education for some of the poorest children in West Africa. We now have nine Christian schools in northern Ghana in the villages of Bagri, Gberi, Korh, Pavuu, Mettoh, Tungan- Zagkpee, Boo, Baapari and Danko-Burree. The charity also ensures every schoolchild receives a meal each day and funds a number of teacher training scholarships to attract teachers to this remote and poor area.
You can also download a PDF version of this newsletter.
Dear Supporters
We would like to introduce you to Comfort Bun-ire.
Comfort is a housewife and subsistence farmer. She lives and works in the remote village of Lyssah, in northwest Ghana – not far from the border with Burkina Faso. She is 34 years-old and lives with her husband, two sons, three daughters and her mother-in-law. Their lives rise and fall with variations in the crops and the weather. By every measure she is poor. Comfort knows scarcity, which can make ‘enough’ seem like plenty.
Home is a small collection of ochre huts arranged around a central courtyard. The air is heavy with heat, the din of cicadas, and the odour of smouldering charcoal. A gnarled acacia tree provides some shade from the midday sun: a scrawny dog scratches and yawns, chickens scrape in the dirt, a couple of piglets doze in the corner – tails flicking flies. A large pot simmers over a wood fire – charcoal black stains on a nearby wall evidence of this daily ritual. Simple steps carved into a log leaning against a wall gains access to the roof, where maize dries in the sun. Scattered around the compound are signs of Comfort’s tough subsistence lifestyle – fishing nets hanging from the tree, a wooden hoe, a rake.
Beneath the compound, a graveyard – the burial place of the ancestors. Their presence, marked by a mud memorial, a daily reminder of the brevity of life.
Her day begins at first light. She is busy all day with housework, pounding millet, collecting firewood, and labouring in the field. Like everyone else in the village, Comfort does not have access to tap water. She is the main person responsible for fetching water for the family. The round trip to the borehole takes about an hour, morning and evening. When she is too busy tending the crops or making TZ (Tuo Zaafi – the staple food , a sticky porridge made from millet flour), she has to send her children to collect water.
Despite owning a small parcel of land her family is not making any income from their fields. Occasionally surplus crops can be sold in the weekly market in Lawra – but it can often be a battle for survival. During this year’s rainy season, exceptionally heavy and prolonged rains flooded the area, destroying Comfort’s fledgling crops and making the food supply for next year uncertain. This has been exacerbated by the rising cost of food in the area, a result of supply issues caused by the pandemic. The current plan is for her husband and oldest child to migrate south to Kumasi in search of work until next harvest, hoping that the weather conditions will be more favourable next year. This is the harsh reality of subsistence farming – what it means to be trapped in the arduous cycle of poverty with little hope for the future.
Although Christmas means little to Comfort, this year she has received a wonderful gift! A new borehole has been drilled in her village and, close by, she watches the walls of a school building starting to rise. Comfort never had any schooling herself but, at the local market, she has heard all about the blue schools. She is overjoyed that a Christian school is being built in her village. Quite apart from the improved prospects that an education will give to her children, Comfort’s overwhelming emotion is relief. Easy access to clean drinking water and the daily provision of food for her children removes an enormous physical and emotional pressure. Real hope has arrived for Comfort and her five children. She is not able to thank you personally. But we count it our greatest privilege to do so on her behalf. There is a spiritual dimension to the work of Savannah, and our prayer is that, in due time, Comfort, her family, and many in the village will come to know another gift: what Paul calls the ‘unspeakable gift’ of the Lord Jesus.
Comfort’s children will join almost 3,000 children now attending our Christian schools in this region. During this year, pupils started attending the newest school in the village of Danko-Buree – the ninth village in which we are working (Comfort’s village of Lyssah is the tenth). None of this could be contemplated without our kind and generous supporters.
We are thankful for all the work that has happened this year, but as the responsibilities and ongoing costs increase, it is without doubt daunting too. We are ever more dependent on your prayers and your generosity.
We join with all our friends in Ghana in wishing you a very happy Christmas and God’s blessing during 2022.
On behalf of the trustees
Paul Ramsbottom
