Each year, we provide our ‘bursary learners’ with a new pair of good quality, hard-wearing shoes: this makes a very big difference to them. We fund our ‘shoe day’ from the regular monthly donations of our overseas friends.

Our bursary learners all live locally with acute economic and social challenges: most have either lost their parents or their parents are unable to work.

Top quality shoes like these, which last the whole school year, cost, on average, £12 ($15 / €15) in Lusaka. This may seem a small amount overseas, but it’s a month’s salary in Zambia for a low-paid worker – which is why most of our children have never had a new pair of shoes.

Today was ‘shoe day’, the one day in the year when the school office turns into a shoe-fitting room – and disbelieving children leave with huge smiles on their faces.