Brick by Brick

Build a School

All the pillars of Adopt a Village were created in response to the causes of child labour, but none more than education. With the Brick by Brick fundraising tool, you can help build classrooms, provide notebooks and desks, and support teachers to give 215 million child labourers the chance to spend their days learning, playing and developing in a safe environment.

You can fundraise for one or all of the pillars of Adopt a Village through Free The Children campaigns and track your progress with specially designed posters for each pillar, such as the one pictured here.

All it takes it $8,500* to build a school or school room overseas. Start fundraising today!

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The Facts

• More than 120 million children around the world are denied the basic right to an education—the key to ending extreme poverty and hunger.

• Education ensures that children learn valuable skills that help them grow, protect themselves from disease, earn a better living and understand their rights to ensure they’re never exploited.

• In many places around the world, schools simply don’t exist or are in no condition for teaching and learning.

• Approximately 53% of the world’s 67 million primary-aged children not in school are girls. Without an education, these children, their families, and their communities cannot break the cycle of poverty.

What You Can Do

By raising money to build a school through Brick by Brick, you bring education to children who never had the chance to go to school before. This is an important first step in development for communities living in poverty.

1. Choose the specific country you want to support.
2. We will send you a wall-sized poster to track your fundraising progress.
3. “Build” one school at a time by throwing fundraisers and spreading awareness about education issues.

The average cost to build a school in the countries where Free The Children works is $8,500*. You are welcome to raise that whole amount, but Free The Children recognizes this may be too much for some people to raise. We match whatever amount you raise with other groups who want to support the same country so you can still contribute to education programs. You might also choose to support other education initiatives like furniture, textbooks or teacher’s salaries.

Top 5 Ideas to Start Filling Up Your Poster

1. Sell the brick stickers in your school and community for a price that corresponds to your school’s goal.
2. Host a talent show at your school and charge an admission fee as a donation to the project.
3. Put on a school dance where each song request requires the purchase of one brick.
4. Organize a race where teams must collect pledges for bricks in order to enter.
5. Host a competition for donations between grades or classes. The incentive? The winner gets to put a pie on a teacher’s face, dunk their principal in water, tape a teacher to the wall, or shave a teacher’s head!

Contact Us

Email youth@freethechildren.com to order your poster and get more information.

Or, click here to start a school or community group.

Downloads & Resources

Download the Educator’s Guide

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Download the Brick by Brick poster

Testimonials

Moscrop Secondary Builds for Change in a Big Way

At Moscrop Secondary School in Burnaby, B.C., 30 students came together to raise $10,500 to build a fully furnished school in Sierra Leone. Little did they know that it would only take six months to reach their goal. Their first major fundraising campaign, called “Buy a Brick,” took place outside the Vancouver Art Gallery during what the group could only describe as three “gruesomely cold days” in late December.

Profile of a school in action

When it comes to youth empowerment, it’s hard to beat all the accomplishments of Eleanor Su, the incoming high school freshman who has already organized two benefit concerts and dozens of other events. But like everyone else, we all need to start somewhere. “After watching a video about a boy with one arm because of the war in Sierra Leone, I was inspired to raise money to build a school there,” explained Eleanor. That is exactly what she accomplished. Taking an active role as president of Terman Middle School’s Free the Children club in Palo Alto, California, Eleanor is devoted to raising awareness and fundraising with the club. “I wanted to get more people like my friends involved too, and let them know they can make a difference in the world,” explains Eleanor passionately.

With the help of Eleanor’s friends, the Terman Middle School Free the Children club was able to organize a benefit concert at the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center with a plethora of local dance performers and even the school band. Although the first benefit concert was difficult to plan, Eleanor’s strong motive and devotion ensured that the next concert was a successful one. “We learned a lot through our mistakes from the first concert.  This time we had a better plan and reached out to more performers and supporters.” With more than sixty performers and two thousand dollars raised at this one event, Eleanor jubilantly plans to continue her work with Free the Children at Gunn High School (Palo Alto, CA) for the rest of her high school career!  To date, Eleanor and the Free The Children club has raised over $8,500 to support the building of a school in Sierra Leone!

“Giving the kids an education would help give them a better life and more opportunities. I really wanted to involve all my friends and let them know that they can make a difference in the world”

- Eleanor Su

* The monetary amounts shown represent the average costs of Free The Children projects in the communities in which we work. In cases where donations exceed what is needed or local conditions prevent program implementation, Free The Children will redirect funds to similar activities to help people in need. If additional funding is required because of specific project requirements or challenging local conditions, Free The Children may provide additional funding to complete the project to meet our commitment to our beneficiaries. Provides for one classroom at a school – construction design varies depending on country – may consist of one-room schoolhouses, school-room or multi-classroom blocks.