Ignorance kills more than bullets

On behalf of my Burundi stage director friend, Arthur Ban, I am running this fundraising campaign to help Ntega Primary School purchase books and desks. Below is the statement by Arthur Ban:

I am fundraising for books and desks for Ntega Primary school.

Ntega Primary School is in Burundi, in Bururi province, Matana commune, in the south of Burundi. Due to the density of the population, this school wanted to build more classes for the rising number of students to give the right to education to every child of Ntega village.

Unfortunately, parents have not been able to provide those classes enough desks to allow all the students to a sits during class. A desk made for 2 children is now used by 4 but some others keep standing to finish the class. This is not only a barrier to success in class, but also is unhealthy. Students can easily transmit diseases to others since they are squeezing each other the whole day. Moreover, when 4 people are sitting on a 2 student’s desk, it is easily broken and in few days almost everyone will be sitting on the ground or will have to stand the whole day.

Apart from this problem of luck of desks, Ntega primary school does not have books; around 6 students use one book, 4 sitting and 2 or more standing behind them to be able to read in the same book. Added to that is that even those available books are extremely old, many of them do not have the half of the total number of pages.

I am now fundraising to help those children and their younger sisters and brother to have desks to sit on and books to study from to study comfortably and be competitive with other Burundian children.

A scene from Ntega Primary School, Burundi:

“Ignorance kills more than bullets”, let’s save a child from ignorance and raise family, a community, a nation…! The future of those children learning in those conditions is uncertain, but today, we can shape it together.

This case is an emergency! It breaks my heart when I remember that this school will reopen this September and students will be suffering again the same way for 9 whole months. Your contribution will help those children have sits and study comfortably and learn effectively. It will also give them access to books, access to permanent source of knowledge. Your contribution will change the narrative of hundreds of children and generation and generations that will study in Ntega primary school.

The students themselves, their parents and the school representatives will be grateful to you from the very bottom of their heart. They will always remember the day you’ll have given them back the right to education, the right to know, the right to grow!


Here is the detail of how the fundraised money will go:
- Dictionary x 12 x $15 = $180  (2 dictionaries per class)
- French books x 120 x $7 = $840  (each class will have 20 desks and 2 children on a desk to share a book)
- English books x 120 x $7 = $840
- Kirundi books x 120 x $7 = $840
- Kiswahili books x 120 x $5 = $600
- Mathematics books x 120 x $7 = $840
- Desks for students x 120 x $13 = $1,560