Radios teach Zambian children under trees

LUSAKA, Mar 7 (Reuters) The children have trekked through mud and overgrown grass to sit under a guava tree and be taught by a radio.

A cool breeze lifts their spirits as a brilliant blue, solar-powered radio perched on a tree branch crackles with asic lessons in arithmetic or biology, tutoring Zambia's future doctors, accountants, lawyers or business leaders.

Thousands of children, who cannot afford to attend the southern African country's public or private schools, have turned to informal classes where the radio is the main learning tool available.

Volunteers equipped with Freeplay Lifeline radios -- bright, robust sets powered by wind-up energy or the sun -- and makeshift blackboards hold classes just about anywhere, including under trees.

Such classes are critical in Zambia partly because of thedevastation caused by AIDS, which kills teachers faster than replacements can be trained.

One in five Zambians is infected with HIV or living with AIDS and the disease has orphaned more than 800,000 children, many of whom have been left out of mainstream education and are now being taught in community schools.

The scheme to provide radios for use in these informal classes was launched five years ago by Britain-based charity Freeplay Foundation, the state Zambia Educational Broadcasting Service and other local and international partners.

''I would like to become a medical doctor once I have completed my education,'' said 17-year-old Isaac Mwale, a model radio-school student who recently passed national examinations.

''THANK YOU'' More than 4,000 Freeplay radios are used to broadcast primary school subjects in around 850 community schools, and demand is growing as the informal classes attract children who might otherwise end up on streets.

Freeplay Foundation Executive Director Kristine Pearson says at least 100,000 Zambian children have benefited so far, easing pressure on schools where the teacher to pupil ratio is one to 60, and also catering for some of Zambia's poorest children.

Many families simply cannot afford the average 157 dollars needed each term to send a child to school in a country where around 65 per cent of 10 million dollars people live on less than 1 dollars a day.

The programmes the children listen to are called ''Learning at Taonga Market'', or ''Thank You'' Market. And Mwale, who dropped out of school because his father could not afford to pay, is one of the grateful ones.

Usually 17-year-olds in Zambia are preparing to go to university or other third-level institutions, but although Mwale is only getting ready to go to high school now, he is not fazed.

''Taonga has brought hope to many of us and I want to use it as a springboard to achieve greater heights in life,'' he said, adding he could compete with children taught in regular schools.

Freeplay says nearly a third of Taonga pupils are orphans and almost 50 per cent are girls. Most have missed years of schooling after dropping out or may never have taken classes before, because of poverty or isolation.

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