Building a school is the easy part. Sustaining a quality learning environment that addresses the needs of girls and boys requires vision, commitment and partnership.

No community we work with has shown more initiative than the community of Zeggaw. After just three days of training, seven motivated PTA members enrolled the entire community to build a four-room school to replace their open-air school.

As we supported Zeggaw with infrastructure, the community repeatedly topped our efforts. So it was no surprise when our field team visited Zeggaw and saw the seedlings you supplied just six months earlier nurtured into papaya trees standing almost three feet tall! This accomplishment is even more outstanding when we take into account that Zeggaw's only water source is a natural spring more than a kilometer and a half from the school site. To achieve these results, Zeggaw's teaching staff organized the students into special groups and assigned a plot of trees to each of them. Each day, students collect water from the spring on their way to school and tend to their trees.

"Group Sustainable Development" and "Group Chip Wilson" rally in healthy competition for rewards like pencils and crayons. Ato Goitom Berhe, Zeggaw's School Director, reports that once parents saw the potential of the trees they were compelled to invest their own resources in seedlings. Ten families at Zeggaw are now borrowing tools and growing their own fruit trees.

Wazza Full Primary School is an example of success on all fronts. The active PTA and keen School Director, Halefom Gezai, report that all of your tree seedlings are surviving despite the dry climate and lack of water nearby. Row after row of seedlings are tended daily by little hands carrying water and clearing weeds. Around the school yard, hand-painted signs inspire children to "water trees for sustainable life." Wazza also has a successful tool-borrowing program for parents who want to improve their own land for growing. Community enrollment has been very successful, but the good news does not stop there. At Wazza, the mobilized have become the mobilizers. The local government recently joined us in awarding Wazza Full Primary with an Award of Excellence for turning their energy and commitment to our program aims into a model for all schools in the area. In fact, at that very ceremony, government officials started some mobilization of their own. Fuelled by Wazza's success, they are currently reviewing their budgets and planning funds to start similar tree planting programs at every school across the woreda. Central to their proposal is an Experience Sharing Program that will allow other schools to visit Wazza or teachers from Wazza to mentor fellow teachers. Your investment in Wazza Full Primary School is compounding with sweeping impact across the woreda.

PTA training has cultivated a spirit of innovation in the pro-active community of Aggo. Following the drought which left this community with virtually no rain to nourish the seedlings planned for this year, Aggo's land was not found to be suitable for planting. But this did not stop the steadfast PTA. Instead of giving up, they made improvements they could more readily control. With local resources they constructed two additional learning classrooms, dug the pit for a new latrine that is now under construction, and planned income generation activities. Aggo is a candidate for a new water well this year and they are determined to see their world in green next season.