Crawley woman aiming to climb Africa's highest mountain to raise funds to build school library

Caroline Thompson, 53, from Pound Hill, is hoping to scale the 19,000ft mountain next month to raise money for the facility in Mirerani.

After retiring from the airline industry after 30 years, she decided to take a complete change of direction and completed a TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).

Last year, Caroline spent six months at Blue Tanzanite Primary School in Mirerani as a volunteer English teacher. Blue Tanzanite is a volunteer charity, which provides education to children from the age of three through to 12.

It focuses on giving poor, vulnerable and orphaned children the right infrastructure, resources, quality teaching and parental support to give them the best opportunity to learn and to help them get the most from their time at school.

It is passionate about its teaching, ensuring children not only get the best start in their education, but also forming them into fully rounded, healthy, happy and well-grounded individuals.

Currently it does not have a library or any books at school.

The aim is to raise £20,000 to build a library for the school and provide reading books, dictionaries, encyclopaedias and general knowledge books for the children. This is expected to improve children’s learning capabilities and enable them to attain higher examination results, leading to a better future for them.

Caroline said: “As I had such a great experience at the school, with the kids who are absolutely amazing are desperate to learn, and soak everything up so willingly and with such fun and laughter in their hearts, I have decided to start a project to raise funds to build a library and fill it with books. I will be climbing Kilimanjaro to raise the funds to build the library.”

The link for the JustGiving page is http://bit.ly/CTBTPS