Imagine a classroom crammed with 100 or more teenagers. Really picture it in your mind. Three or four students sit at desks designed to hold two kids. The room created to hold 20 or 25 desks holds 30 or 35. There are not enough textbooks to go around. Students near the back can’t see the board over the heads of all the other students. The noise level, even when the students are calm, is disruptive…and when the kids get loud – well, no one is learning.

This is a typical situation in Mali’s schools and is the current situation in Mali Rising’s Leon W. Pete Harman Middle School in Tentoubougou. Until everything is changed thanks to a new Mali Rising village school.