Leigh Hunt B is a boarding house at Christ's Hospital, West Sussex. It's part of a school which is a success story, achieving great results through the hard work of its pupils and teachers. Kafusi High School is in Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. As a school it's a success story, achieving great results through the hard work of pupils and teachers.

There, you might say, the similarities end. At Christ's Hospital pupils benefit from the very best of boarding facilities. Pupils can prosper academically in the knowledge that they are comfortable and safe. Kafusi recently achieved 6th form status, meaning that students from all round Matabeleland are keen to enrol on A level courses which are the pathway to success. Some pupils come from hundreds of miles away... the problem is that there is no actual boarding provision.

Many pupils at Kafusi have resorted to what Zimbabweans call 'bush boarding'. They enrol at the school and find a place to sleep where they can. If they are lucky this might be with friends, or in a friendly church. If they are not lucky they may be sleeping outdoors and putting themselves into a vulnerable situation. Recently the school has been able to help, but only by using classroom blocks as a base for rough sleeping.

This April, the senior pupils in Leigh Hunt B are going to try to raise a significant sum to help complete the building of a girls' boarding house at Kafusi High School.

Inspired by the Monitor team of 2018, who, literally and metaphorically, laid the foundations by raising an incredible £25,000 for the project, the Leigh Hunt B girls are going to go bush-boarding themselves within the historic grounds of Christ's Hospital - setting up camp in the school quad over a chilly April weekend and attempting to continue with all the rhythms of their academic life without a boarding house to sleep in.

The aim is to give the project the final push needed get over the line. Many of the materials have been bought; the foundations have been dug; bricks have been moulded by the local community. The project was hit by the pandemic, which led to the cancellation of an Army building unit visit and some materials going out of date, and the school and the community have been working hard to get it back on track.

Christ's Hospital, through its chapel charity fund, has in fact been supporting the community around Kafusi for several years. In 2011, working with the Zimbabwean poet and musician ALBERT NYATHI, we helped establish a cooperative community garden called Thuthukani not far from the school.

In the seven years of the project it has grown from a small project designed to feed HIV orphans to a community resource that feeds the community and raises money for it from surplus food sales. This has had a life-changing effect for many of the inhabitants of this dry and neglected area of Matabeleland. More recently our project has expanded to create a partnership with Kafusi High School.

In the case of Thuthukani the Christ's Hospital community has raised funds to help the Kafusi community help itself. The same applies to the proposed girls' hostel - donations have been and will be made in the form of materials, and the local community has undertaken to provide the labour to bring the project to completion.

All donations received for this crowdfunding effort be transferred directly to the project via a Harare educational charity, ABDO. Although the fundraising efforts are pupil-led and driven there will be full staff supervision and distribution of the funds will be fully supervised in line with best charity practice.