Thursday, March 01, 2007

African School Children Say Thank-you Slotland!

Classes begin at Malawi School Funded by Slotland.com

Classes have begun at the rural African school built by popular online casino and mobile slot machine site, Slotland.com. It’s not only changing the lives of the children of Juma, Malawi – the project is now reaching out to bring new hope to surrounding villages as well.

“In Europe and America and everywhere Slotland.com games are played, we take basics like education and food and water for granted,” said Hannah Morante of Slotland.com. “Slotland feels obliged to share our bounty.”

A little more than a year ago, Slotland.com began collaborating with local villages in Malawi to build and operate the elementary school. Classes have now begun and hundreds of villagers are involved in maintaining the school and the demonstration gardens that feed its 116 students.

"These people don’t know what an online slot machine is and they’ve never seen a mobile phone, never mind played video poker on one,” said Slotland’s local project coordinator. “But they do understand generosity and are all forever grateful to Slotland.com.”

Opening a school takes more than construction of a building. The popular online and mobile slots machine site provided all funding for building the school as well as training volunteers and recruiting teaching staff. They’ve also provided skilled project coordinators to teach villagers to run the school when they eventually leave.

The school, known as Umodzi-Mbame, provides meals to all students and even grows the food it serves. Its gardens have been used to demonstrate new farming methods to local farmers – ways to conserve soil and water and produce more food with less work.

We got the village elders on side from the start,” explains the project coordinator. “Our project depends on the involvement of the whole community so their support was critical. It’s amazing what a positive difference Slotland has made here."