Dormitory at Mlondwe school — building it brick by brick
Mlondwe school sits high in the Tanzanian mountains, at 2,100 metres, where even the mornings are freezing. A hundred girls already have a roof over their heads. Another hundred still sleep packed into old classrooms. Last year's gifts paid for the foundations. This year's gifts will raise the walls — brick by brick.
The situation right now
Anyone who has been to Mlondwe knows how cold the mornings get there — and what a classroom looks like after a hundred people have slept in it overnight. The school sits at 2,100 metres in the mountains of southern Tanzania, where morning temperatures drop to around 13°C. It's not what you'd expect from Africa, but temperature isn't only about latitude — altitude matters too. Students simply shiver through their first lessons.
Over 300 students attend the school and need boarding at the same time — 200 girls and 100 boys. The first hundred girls already have a dormitory. The other hundred girls, and every one of the boys, still sleep packed into old classrooms — sometimes a hundred people in one room, four to a bunk bed. Sleeping in a classroom isn't safe or dignified — and that's exactly what we want to end for the next hundred girls. That's why we're launching this campaign for the shell of the building, which should start going up next year on the foundations we laid this year.
It's great that the school isn't relying on us alone, either — it works together with the village community. This year the village built new toilets for the students — the old ones were in such bad shape, and there were so few of them, that it simply couldn't wait any longer.
What we're building (2026)
Last year's donations paid for the foundations of the new dormitory. Now we want to keep going with the shell of the building — two larger rooms for the students and one small room for a house-mother who will live there with them.
High in the mountains, everything costs more than you'd expect — materials have to be trucked up from the valley on poor roads, so every brick carries the cost of that journey too. We estimate the shell of the building at roughly 100,000 CZK.
Building a piece of wall = 1 Eur
1 Eur = one brick, transport, cement and labour.
the shell of the building = 4,000 to 6,000 bricks
The bigger picture
Once these girls have a place of their own, a hundred boys will still be sleeping in old classrooms. A dormitory for every student at Mlondwe won't be built in one year — it grows step by step, at the pace the school, the village and donors can manage. That's exactly why a recurring gift makes sense here: you're not funding a single event, you're growing something with us, brick by brick.
Bez mámy
Bez mámy has supported schools in Tanzania since 2009 and now works with around 20 of them. Our "Pomoc školám" (Helping Schools) programme has clear rules for how every gift is used, requires the local community to contribute too (just like the village that built new toilets for Mlondwe school), and includes regular on-site oversight, led by our coordinator David.
Thank you for helping where it genuinely matters. Become part of supporting Mlondwe school — ideally with a monthly gift that helps the building grow step by step.
