Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

School #2 construction finished!

They need to clear away building materials by the looks of it, and do some painting and other bits, but the structure of our second school is now complete. Image quality not great because rainy season in Cameroon is not ideal for high end HD photos :D.

More details on the school here:

Here are the photos!

A reminder that the charity we use is called ‘Building Schools For Africa’. Link below:

http://www.schoolsforafrica.co.uk/

Positech school #2 Cameroon update

We just got sent new pics of the start of foundations for the second school we are building in Cameroon. the site is actually different to the one that was originally started, because all sorts of internal problems in the country meant that our funds had to be redirected to a different part of the country. (There is some political unrest in Cameroon).

The location is described as:

“Ecole Catholique St Barthelemy de Djeugo is located in Bahouan village, in Bamendjou Subdivision, Haut Plateau Division of the West Region of Cameroon. It is approximately 3km from the Centre of Bahouan on un-tarred but motor able roads.”

Which looks like its about here:

Anyway, the good news is that things are back on track, and we have pics to prove it :D

Positech African School #2 update

Previous discussion of this school can be found here:

https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/category/school/

I just got an update from our charity partner ‘Building Schools For Africa’ which includes some awesome photos showing the construction of the second school in Cameroon. It looks like they have hit a pause whilst certain foundation things settle before finishing off the rest of it. Enjoy these pics :D (Crap photo quality and layout due to fairly shaky source material and pdf form…)

No real game news to speak of as I literally got off a plane a few hours ago. Life will return to its usual pace tomorrow.

 

Positech Games is…building another school in Cameroon

…Well not actually doing the building work obviously. I have trouble putting shelves up these days, but we are funding another school in Cameroon in partnership with the charity Building Schools For Africa.  If you read my blog a lot you might know that we already built a school in Cameroon a while back. Here is the last blog post about it. Its pretty transformational when you look at what the school looked like before (basically a shack) and how awesome it looks afterwards.

Our reason for doing this remains the same. Education is a good thing, and there are still too many people in the world who don’t have access to it. Education helps lift people out of poverty, and is a pre-condition for a modern democracy. I was lucky enough to be born in England, not into any money whatsoever (far from it), but nevertheless in a country where I would always be housed, and have food, clean water, education and safety. I understand why people give to local charities, or charities that are working on problems they have personally experienced or are deeply connected to, but personally I find it unusually easy to detach myself from considerations such as ‘people like me’ and ‘my country’ and think more about ‘who needs help’ and ‘whats the most impact my donation can make’. I don’t know of any charity in the south west of the UK that could affect as many peoples lives with such dramatic effect as building an entire school in Cameroon would, for the same money. It also doesn’t bother me that I probably will never see the school, or meet anyone who goes to it. I’m unusual like that, so I’m in a good position to do this.

The school in question is called (rather unfortunately for an atheist like me…) ‘St Therese of the child Jesus catholic primary school’ and looks like this:

The last school we built ended up looking like this:

Bit of an improvement methinks. Obviously they just demolish the old one and start again. Project details:

“The project is just the three classrooms, an office, a latrine with hand washing facilities, 27 benches to seat 54-81 children (depending on their age and size!) and 3 tables and chairs for the teachers, tools and seeds for the school garden, project management and monitoring costs. ”

Lets not gloss over the latrine and hand-washing facilities too quickly. Hopefully this will mean better educated AND healthier kids. The total cost to positech  is £23,967 (approximately $33,000). The school is in Muyuka in Cameroon, population 34,000.

Like last time, I offer the disclaimer that although these blog posts can read a bit ‘ooh aren’t we wonderful’, I do them mainly to provide information and encourage others to get involved too, and I know thats happened at least once. Positech Games is a bizarrely successful games company, and I feel very lucky to be in a position where we can do stuff like this. Big thanks to everyone who has continued to buy our games and make this sort of thing possible. You rock.

Quick School Update

They sent through pictures of putting up our little plaque thing :D I am so proud of getting this done :DPositech plaque

Positech plaque 2

More details can be found by searching the school tag on this blog, at the very top of the post. (Positech funded a school in africa, basically).