Mum’s mission to help build school in Ghana

It could be said that Jane Priest has something of a passion for children.
Jane with some of the youngsters she and William met on their visit to Ghana last year.Jane with some of the youngsters she and William met on their visit to Ghana last year.
Jane with some of the youngsters she and William met on their visit to Ghana last year.

This Longridge mum and Burnley FC fan has two of her own, has the care of one hundred at Little People at the Limes nursery on Berry Lane which she started five years ago with her friend Vicky Shaw, and is now about to take off for a small village in Ghana to finish building a school there for about 60 local youngsters.

Jane was there a year ago - then with her 16 year old son William - on a first-ever visit to the village, “called Woe and an impoverished, linear settlement where we started the walls and roof for four classrooms for the children - many of them street children - and hope to finish this time,” Jane explained.

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“It’s really hard work in the hot sun, bricks being made locally by hand, gravel carried in two-handed pans, the village ladies carrying build items on their heads, everyone working together, teaching as well, from 7.30am to 4.30pm with us being about ten minutes away by minibus from the volunteer house where we stayed.”

Basic was the word at the house with a bed, shelf for clothes, water and electricity, no hot water...”but the food was very good with meals which were also brought out to us at the school,” Jane added.

For the 2014 visit and also this year, she is joining the volunteer travel organisation African Adventure, which has teamed up with Burnley FC In The Community ‘to offer supporters an opportunity of a lifetime in Ghana.’

Burnley-born and a season ticket holder for the club, Jane said “It was exactly that for us which is why I’ve decided to go again, this time for eight days. William wanted to sign up again as the experience was so special but this time his mock exams are more important.”

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So Jane is looking forward again to the special ‘touchy-feely’ very warm welcome by the villagers and also that by Siva Vorgzorgbe, himself a street child but now director of the African Adventures programme in Ghana.

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