A PROJECT started by a teaching assistant – and carried on by pupils – has raised more than £300 to pay for an African boy’s education.

Pupils at Woodlands School, in Nethermayne, Basildon, sold plant boxes, bug boxes, cakes, hanging baskets, metal brackets, knitted blankets, picked and sold fruit and held a raffle to raise the money to send Lambert Niokuri to school.

Lambert is 15 and one of five children. Coming from a family of subsistence farmers, he would not be able to attend school without Woodlands’ support.

When he gets home from school, he teaches all his brothers and sisters what he has learned.

Jo Carr, a learning support assistant who worked with the pupils, said: “The pupils have worked really hard, giving freely of their own time. It is great to see young people prepared to help less well-off youngsters on another continent achieve their dreams.”