A COMMUNITY champion has returned to Zambia to see how a training programme is helping teachers to educate children with special needs.

Marion Cornick, who is a member of The Rotary Club of Basingstoke Deane and founder of The Loddon School, at Sherfield-on-Loddon, has recently returned from a trip to The University Teaching Hospital (UTH) special school, in Lusaka.

As previously reported by The Gazette, the grandmother-of-one has been working alongside The Loddon School to raise cash to train staff at the special school in Lusaka. Currently, there are 30 teachers and 250 children who attend the school.

Marion, 73, has just returned from another trip to see how the training programme is progressing as well as donating £1,600 from herself and The Rotary Club of Basingstoke Deane to fund repairs to fix the school minibus.

Marion told The Gazette: “It is a very poor country and people have nothing. A lot of the children are orphans from HIV and don’t have two parents and a lot of them have one parent.

“We take toys and books, and we have set up a library at the school. We have supported the children but the really essential thing is to teach teachers so we have a lasting influence.

“We now have six teachers who can teach the programme and we have one teacher doing a degree at the Open University. It is a huge, huge project.”

Marion may be training teachers at the school but children also got in on the action after the Basingstoke branch of Build-A-Bear Workshop donated 36 teddy bears for youngsters at the school.

Marion said: “I took 36 teddies to Zambia. The children were just so excited about them, and they really loved them.”