School Locations
Aguie Christian Primary School
The Advanced Bible School of the Evangelical Church of Niger is located just outside the village of Aguie. For more than a decade the staff and students of this school have wanted to open a Christian primary school in order to provide quality education to their children and the children of the village. They took this project upon themselves and opened the Aguie Christian School with one kindergarten class in 2006. They cleaned out a storage room, built desks and benches from old doors and other scraps of wood and recruited a Christian teacher from their community. Since its conception, the school has added one class per year. Soon they will run out of space, and in the fall of 2009 they will have to find a different facility. The best alternative is to build a new school on property the Church owns located in the village. This would give the school the space it needs to expand, as well as encourage more children from the village to attend.
Tsibiri Primary Boarding School
Tsibiri Primary Boarding School has a prominent place in the recent history of Niger. It was orginally founded by Serving in Missions (SIM) nearly forty years ago. Many of the leaders of the Evangelical Church of Niger attended this Christian School, and so, in many ways it has been a source of inspiration and the impetus behind their vision for education in Niger. After SIM handed the school over to the Evangelical Church in the mid-1980s, the leaders and faculty worked hard to maintain and improve upon the quality of education provided there. In the last decade students have consistently excelled in their coursework and on national exams, which has allowed them to successfully go on to middle school.
Due to its long history and unique status as a boarding school, many of the needs there differ from the other Evangelical Church education projects. The buildings are old and in constant need of maintenance, and because the majority of the children (245/353) are boarding students more funds are needed to provide for meals and medical care. Additionally, the parents of the students dream of a middle school, where their children can continue with their high level of education.
Zinder Christian Primary School
Several members of the EERN Church in Zinder dreamed of starting a Christian School in their city. After receiving a land grant from the government of Niger, their dream started to become reality. Their first big task was to raise funds to put a wall around the property. (In Niger, if private property doesn't have a wall around it within five years, it is repossessed by the government.) After successfully completing that task, funds had to be raised to build the school. With the help of volunteers from the Reformed Church in America and others, the first block of classrooms was completed in 2006 and in the fall of 2007 the school officially opened its doors.
The school started with a Pre-school, Kindergarten, and 1st grade and the leaders plan to add a class each year. In order to accomplish this enormous endeavor, a 2nd block of classrooms must be completed by October 2009 so a 3rd grade can be added.