I’m happy to inform you that we’ve finished constructing two new buildings with four classrooms for our primary school. We built them, roofed them, installed windows and doors, and whitewashed and painted it all. In the process we were greatly helped by our teachers and the students of the masonry course in the Padri Vjeko Center, who used the task to perfect their skills. The buildings, which you are able to see on the photos, look great!

For us, this is really significant. And it will have a substantial impact on the quality of teaching. Primary school classrooms will now be a bit less burdened, because there will be less students per classroom.

You see, the existing number of classrooms in the primary school had become too small to take in all those little school children eager to learn. The primary school is currently attended by just over 1.700 little ones, so the existing 21 classrooms were pretty crowded. Now it’s going to be a bit easier, because four new classrooms really mean a lot. However, we have an equipment problem, but I hope that it will soon be solved. We made and constructed everything, but we lack – school benches...

That’s why we all now hope to get help from good people in order to obtain the money for the wood, out of which, of course, we will make desks and chairs all by ourselves. Until we make all that, we’ll have to use old benches and the students will just have to ‘squeeze’ a little bit. More students per bench. There’s no other choice.

We were so delighted by our parishioners, the primary schoolchildren’s parents. They all came during the construction and gave us a hand. Sometimes there were more than one hundred of them at the same time. They also cleaned up the land surrounding the new classrooms. And, when it is all completely finished, the women will plant flowers there.

It all gave us incentive to keep on building. That’s why these days we are starting the construction of another two buildings with two classrooms. We will do everything that is in our power to provide these children with safe and happy schooling!

Translated by: Branimir Mlakić
Edited by: Valerie Kae Ken

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