School joins our campaign to help pupils in Africa

Nine-year-old Hussein leaps up and says: "On Fridays we get fish-fingers and chips, but the rest of the week they give us disgusting things, like cauliflower and carrots!" The other children vigorously add complaints of their own.

Of these eight children attending Marlborough, where 35 languages are spoken and a quarter of the pupils get free school lunches, seven say they have their own computers, six own Nintendos and five have televisions in their bedrooms.

When they discover that most children from Opande Primary School in western Kenya - with whom they will exchange letters as part of the School Linking Programme supported by the Evening Standard's Christmas Appeal - have no shoes, no electricity, no plumbed water, frequently go hungry and have never heard of an iPod, their jaws drop.

Jessica Finer, 47, Marlborough's headteacher, says that by twinning their inner-city school with rural Opande, her pupils will "be offered a unique opportunity to have their eyes opened about life in Africa, and to see how incredibly privileged they are".

Marlborough is one of the first schools to sign up to the School Linking Programme initiated by Plan UK, the British arm of the charity Plan International, which aims to partner 2,000 UK schools with schools in Kenya, Malawi and Sierra Leone. Ms Finer said: "The Evening Standard Christmas Appeal is a brilliant idea and I urge other London schools to get involved in this programme."

Last week the Evening Standard visited Marlborough's twin school on the shores of Lake Victoria and found pupils desperately eager for an education. But they must brave poverty, malaria and even risk attack by leopards on the walk from their isolated villages over an hour away.

Opande, we learned, had faced imminent closure in 2004 due to a chronic shortage of teachers and poor exam results. Plan International poured resources into the school, built new classrooms, provided water tanks, a kitchen for school dinners, donated textbooks and helped to train teachers - and the result is a school transformed into the top performing school (of 29) in the district.

Opande's inspirational headteacher, Felix Ouma, 39, welcomed his school's link with Marlborough Primary. "This programme is about building friendship and learning from one another," he said. "It will be invaluable to our teachers to exchange notes on curriculums and teaching methods, and it will motivate our pupils to work harder."

He proudly introduced a dozen children from across their eight yeargroups. "We call them, the best of the best," he said and singled out a 14-year-old who had beaten 400 other pupils to come first in the district. "What's extraordinary about this girl," he said, "is that she is an orphan who has achieved this without parents."

The two schools are due to make their first exchange of letters, photographs and learning materials before Christmas.

"Our school is a cross-section of London society," says Jessica Finer. "Making a link with Opande is going to be a great learning experience for teachers, parents and children alike. The programme is also sustainable - the children will have an opportunity to build their relationships over years."

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET INVOLVED IN OUR CHARITY CAMPAIGN

HOW THE SCHOOL LINKING PROGRAMME WORKS

British schools pay £600 a year to belong to the Plan UK programme, of which £200 goes direct to the link school in Africa to effect improvements, while the balance is used to support the direct costs of running the programme.
Participating schools receive a resource pack - with lesson plans, DVDs, artefacts and photographs - as well as a half-day workshop at the start of the programme.
Communications between teachers of the linked schools will be facilitated, allowing them to exchange information on teaching methods and curriculums. Travel Counsellors, a travel company, is funding Plan UK to build five IT resource centres near the remote schools, which will allow teachers to communicate by email and via a dedicated intranet portal.
Pupils will communicate across continents by writing up to three longhand letters a year or by one-to-one messaging or blogs on the secure website.

HOW TO DONATE

London schools that wish to link with schools in Africa as part of the Plan UK School Linking programme should email link@plan-international.org.uk or telephone 02074829777
Interested schools can also visit the website on www.planschoolslink.org
Readers who wish to donate money to improve facilities for schools in Africa can do so either through the website www.plan-uk.org/eveningstandard/ or by sending cheques to "Plan UK", marked "Evening Standard Christmas Appeal" on the back, and addressed to Evening Standard Christmas Appeal, Evening Standard, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT.
Readers who wish to become closely associated with a school in Africa and help set up a link between it and a London school can also agree their own "sponsorship" fee with Plan UK.