HUNDREDS of poverty-stricken African children have a brand new school thanks to a fundraising effort in Swindon.

The school was built at a cost of £36,000 in Nairobi, Kenya, to help some of the most deprived children in the world.

The Rotary Club of Old Town was behind the project and continues to provide financial support.

The group first hit upon the idea in 2000, when a member's daughter returned from three months teaching work in Nairobi.

Club secretary Randy Burden said: "The pictures she showed us of the school were absolutely horrendous. One of the classrooms measured six feet by six feet. The roofs were made of rusty corrugated tin with huge holes and the walls consisted of broken wooden slats with jagged edges and the small surrounding area was very uneven, with lots of dumped rubbish.

"Three years and £36,000 of fundraising later, the generosity of thousands of people has achieved the dream or rebuilding it."

Mr Burden said that one of the key objectives of Rotary Clubs is to help people through education and members became determined to help the African children when they saw the terrible conditions they learn in. Fundraising began in earnest in 2000 and the group held a number of events including a duck race and a sporting dinner.

The sporting dinner was attended by football legend Jimmy Greaves and, accompanied with an auction, it raised £4,000.

Bryan Hotter, a teacher at Goddard Park primary school, raised £1,200 by taking part in the London Marathon.

Old Town Rotary Club sent a letter of appeal to all the other Rotary Clubs in the country, who provided support totalling more than £6,000.

This included £4,000 raised by Milton Keynes Rotary Club alone, which held a number of fetes and plant sales.

The new school, named the Desai Children's School, has now been completed and serves around 250 children from one of the poorest areas of Kenya.

It is supported with an extra £50 a month from Old Town Rotary Club which helps pay for teachers' salaries.

The pupils who attend the school are street children, many of whom are orphans.

The help of Old Town Rotary Club could save many of these children from a life of begging or petty crime.

Education for children in Kenya is not compulsory, making the work of the Rotarians all the more important.

In February 2003 Mr Burden and four other Old Town Rotarians visited the school for the first time.

It is located in the shantytown of Kwarangari on the outskirts of Nairobi.

They found the dilapidated and dangerous old building had been replaced with a substantial and safe new one.

Inside the school Mr Burden said they were greeted with welcoming smiles from teachers and children.

He said: "When we arrived at this very poor area of the world the initial impression was of shock at the incredible conditions these people live in.

"You realise how little you need to raise to have an enormous effect on the lives of these people. In Rotary we particularly believe that education is the way out of poverty.

"At least with an education and being able to read or write these children will stand a better chance of being employed one day.

"We have all travelled a long way in the last three years and to see a dream realised was fantastic."