A KIND-hearted teenager is fronting a campaign in Monmouth to improve education for children in a deprived region of Zimbabwe.

Fourteen-year-old Chris Tang, a pupil at Monmouth School for Boys, teamed up with Charlie Walker, the former Head of School, to support The Hwange Schools Project last month.

Year 10 pupil Chris wrote about the project in a school newsletter and organised donations across Haberdashers schools - collecting six suitcases of toys, 65 geography books from Monmouth School for Girls and thousands of pens, pencils and pencil cases together with educational posters.

These resources have now been taken out to the Matebeleland region in Zimbabwe and given to 13 rural schools.

Chris and his family, who live in Clearwell, also collected a sum of £1,800 which has gone towards the provision of desks and chairs for early learning classrooms in the region.

“The whole project is ongoing and we will be trying to raise money through various initiatives this year,” he said.

“We have set a target of raising £2,000 to put towards purchasing specific Zimbabwean curriculum textbooks because the lack of these was identified as the main challenge facing the schools.

“Many of the schools have no text books at all, and where there are some, often one text book is shared between 10 or more pupils.”

The Hwange Schools Project is a volunteer-based organisation that aims to improve literacy levels in the schools in Matabeleland.