Our Rainbow House: Changing futures in Zambia

PICTURED: Our Rainbow House provides a full primary education to more than 90 students each year. 

An exemplar for President Yinka’s push to Create Lasting Impact, a Queensland-funded school in an impoverished Zambian district showcases the importance of building projects that stand the test of time.

Words Sarah Atkins. Immediate Past President. No Borders Rotaract.

Standing in a well-pressed high school uniform in the bright Zambian sun, a teenage student named Harrison speaks of his future plans.

“I’ve already started working on how I can impact the community.

“We’re about to launch a global impact network group… the young ones, able to speak up with their views on global issues, will be a really good thing.”

Harrison is a scholarship recipient and graduate of Our Rainbow House (ORH), a school in the unplanned settlement of Chainda, Zambia, that is sustained entirely through the dedication of a group of Australians, 11 Rotary clubs across both Zambia and Australia, and the hard work of local staff. ORH is nearing one and a half decades of continued service, meaning that hundreds of graduates are now adults. In July, their very first student to attend university, Lucky, graduated with a Diploma in IT. His brother Jonathan is in his second year of computer science, while Cephas Nguni is starting a degree in journalism to become a sports writer.

“Without ORH I can’t even imagine where I would be,” Cephas says.

Our Rainbow House provides a full primary education to more than 90 students a year. Children are enrolled directly into Grade 1; there is no preschool in Chainda, meaning their formal education quite literally begins when they walk through the doors and ends when they transfer into the local high school.

Our Rainbow House also provides nutritious school lunches, often with meat like chicken or beef, which is a rare luxury at home. Two sports teams – the Rainbow Warriors football team and the Rainbow Lorikeets netball team – are a much loved aspect of the school.

But getting it going – and keeping it going – hasn’t always been an easy road. When she visited the village back in 2002, founder Alison Ray was, in her words, “61 and bulletproof”. She had just spent time volunteering at the School of St. Jude’s in Tanzania, and visited Chainda to meet her son’s sponsored child before returning home. The next few days would change her life.

“From the first time I visited this village, I felt a warmth and a great need to help these village folk who had been neglected. They are beautiful people, but the village had been let down many times by well-intentioned charities. I thought I could just waltz back into Chainda after my initial visit and fix it with a school, clinic, orphanage and a huge kitchen to feed everyone – a dreamer, no doubt – and thought about it so much on the plane on the way home. But the doctor I went to before I left told me I was not to think of fixing Zambia overnight. He had worked in AIDS clinics throughout Africa for four years.

I thought, well, I can give it a crack anyway. Sadly, he was right.”

Various roadblocks came without warning, from COVID-19 to stolen trucks to knocked-back applications. “COVID nearly wrecked us, as it did so many. All I could think of was those little faces that depended on us so much.”

Alison is very vocal about her gratitude for those who kept everything afloat. She seems to easily remember every person that helped contribute to ORH by name, and there are so many that it’s beyond the scope of this article to mention them all. Many have spent years on the ground working at the school, and backbone organisations RAWCS and ACFID keep ORH up-to-date with all applicable bylaws. Official ambassador Kasey Chambers performs her music regularly at Australian funding events, as well as often working at the school herself.

“This gift of music I’ve been given is a whole form of communication,” Kasey says. “Every visit to the school in Zambia, and every Zoom catch up we have, fills my heart with so much love and hope for these beautiful children.”

For almost 15 years, the commitment and perseverance of Alison and many other people and organisations have helped keep Our Rainbow House alive. As for the students themselves, it’s clear as soon as you meet them that they’re positive, hard-working kids, excited about the potential for their futures.

“If I’m honest, I don’t think there is any way I can say how much I appreciate the great things that my sponsors and supporters from ORH are doing,” Harrison says. “I hope to give back in a way that impacts the community as well.”