Lesiraa Primary School is affectionately remembered as our first ever school. In July 2004 a group of pupils from Acklam Grange School, Middlesbrough, stumbled across Lesiraa School on a two-week Overland Expedition to Kenya and Tanzania. What they witnessed shocked them, and proved to be quite distressing. They simply could not believe that young people could be educated in such conditions, and in a tearful and emotional meeting they made a pledge, “We need to make a difference – we can’t just walk away from this”
The immediate response was to leave a sum of money to start a building project for the school, and upon their return to Middlesbrough they launched what was to become known as the Lesiraa Project.
Over a period of two years the pupils and staff at Acklam Grange School engaged themselves in a fundraising campaign, with the eventual outcome being the building, furnishing and equipping of four brand new classrooms at Lesiraa School.
In July 2007 another group of pupils from Acklam Grange School were able to visit Lesiraa School to see at first hand the result of all the hard work.
The national examination results for Lesiraa School in 2013 and 2014 were outstanding, and were amongst the best in the whole area. In order to further motivate the teachers to continue their excellent efforts, and after consultation with our committee at Meserani, it was decided to begin a refurbishment programme of the staff room at the school. As it stood in July 2014 they had no shelving, no cupboards, no storage, no water tanks, no adequate teacher’s desks – in fact they had nothing at all! In August 2014 Graeme Fallowfield from Hartlepool College of Education visited Lesiraa School as part of the Acklam Grange Adults Trip, and put up shelving in the staff room as the first part of the refurbishment programme.
From 2010 onwards, many pupils from Lesiraa School have been sponsored by The Meserani Project to go through their secondary education.
Listen to the pupils of Lesiraa Primary School singing for us in August 2013:
