Lipi is a student. She’s also a teacher. Each day she spends five hours at school – where she is studying for her country’s equivalent of GCSEs – and returns home to add in another couple of hours teaching younger children who live locally. Why?
“Most of their families are poor, so they cannot go to school. When they come to us we give them teaching” says Lipi. She knows that education can be the key to a better future and this drives her on.
Community spirit obviously runs deep in Lipi and her family. She shares a bedroom with her parents and her four younger sisters, and all seven of them pitch in with a couple of other families for the use of a communal kitchen.
But if you’re thinking that this is meant to be one of those stories to get the pity juices flowing, think again. Lipi’s take on life is 100% action: she’s fired up and feisty about improving things for herself, her family and her community, using every minute she can.
“I get up in the morning at 6, wash myself and then I wash the plates. I take my food then go to school. When I come back from school I help my mother cook food. Then I make my sisters’ bath, give them food and then make them sleep.”
It’s a full life, but thanks to the involvement of Tearfund partner HEED, Lipi has been able to earn money from her teaching, enough to fund her education entirely by herself.
“My father is the only earning person in my family. Because we are five sisters it is very hard for him to afford everything. If I don’t get the money my parents wouldn’t send me to school.”
With your support HEED has offered hundreds of people like Lipi the chance to change their world. But at the end of the day, it’s Lipi’s determination that makes her the real hero of this story.