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Students at the Meetsetshehla school in South Africa

It was a simple gift of football shirts, but the spontaneous act of kindness has led to a firm friendship between a Rawdon school and its South African counterpart.

When students from Benton Park asked if they could send Leeds United shirts to children in South Africa, they could hardly have imagined what the gift was to lead to.

The two schools formed a firm friendship and just a few years later Benton's deputy head, Richard Hoban, took the most nerve-wracking lesson in his life when he taught students at Meetsetshehla - watched by assorted officials including the province's education minister.

The lesson was arranged to follow on from the opening of the new science laboratory - performed by Mr Hoban and his wife Linda.

The lab was made possible with help from Benton Park, and the Yorkshire school is thanked with a plaque on the outside wall of the new building.

Now, Benton Park is hoping to welcome students from Meetsetshehla over to England.

Mr Hoban explained that the friendship between the two schools began in 2002 when a radio station was running a shirt amnesty' as South Africa campaigned to get the 2010 world cup.

"I was just walking around the playground when one of the kids asked can we send some football shirts to South Africa?'," he said.

Benton Park made contact with the South African school, in the Limpopo province, through their local community church.

"We sent two sets of Leeds United shirts and about eight weeks later we got some fantastic pictures of the boys from Meetsetshehla wearing the shirts," said Mr Hoban.

From there the relationship grew, with students writing to each other and Benton paying for the networking of some old but workable computers which the Meetsetshehla School had been given.

In 2005 Mr Hoban flew out to South Africa to meet the staff and pupils who had become such firm friends.

Writing after his visit, he said: "The school is made up of two parallel lines of brick-built huts which contain up to 30 tables and a chalkboard. Class sizes can be as large as 50 with the learners' age range from 12 to 18 ( but there were many who were in their 20s). The only specialist facilities are a motor mechanics workshop with benches and vices, a food studies room with two cookers and a computer room. The science facilities amounted to a cupboard the size of a bed-sized cabinet. Practical science was almost non-existent.

"The learners all live in the local farming community or in the township of Leseding. Some have to walk up to 10 kilometers from home before getting a bus or a ride in the back of a pick-up truck. As school starts at 7.30am, this means a very early start. Apart from the main highway all the roads are dirt tracks and as this is an economically poor area, family transport is not an option.

"Teaching up to 11 lessons a day for the week I was in the school was an exciting and rewarding experience. The learners were keen to hear about school in Leeds and what young people at the other side' of the world did.

"They had all the normal' teenage anxieties and ambitions, but had the added concern of rape, pregnancy, HIV and poverty.

"These four factors were very real and were confirmed and enhanced on my visits to the local fruit, game and cattle farms (where most of the learners hope to find employment), to the orphanage for the children of AIDS victims, into the township to witness the abject poverty and to the caravan where locally trained women gave help, advice, comfort and (if possible) medication to the rapidly increasing number of adults and children being diagnosed as HIV positive."

While he was at the school Mr Hoban spoke to the trustees about what was needed, and it was clear that they needed help with science facilities.

Speaking recently, he said: "Four out of ten adults are HIV positive and there is a real desperate need for doctors. Because not many learners were matriculating in science they were not going on to study medicine."

A project was launched to build a much-needed science laboratory, and Benton funded about a quarter of the cost of the building as well as donating money for equipment - making the Rawdon school the biggest contributor.

Mr Hoban and his wife Linda were invited to officially open the science laboratory during a visit last year, and Benton Park was among those mentioned on a plaque on the wall of the new building.

"They invited me to do the first practical lesson in the new laboratory - it was the most nervous I have ever been in my school career," Mr Hoban said.

"Not only did I get the 20 learners, but all the dignitaries from the province, including the education minister."

Since the official opening, the building has been well-used.

"I am told by my colleagues that the laboratory is running really well and lots of children are accessing it," said Mr Hoban.

Last year, three of the Benton Park teachers went out to help at the school.

Now it is planned to bring some of the Meetsetshehla children - many of whom have never been more than ten miles from home - over to Benton.

And various fundraising activities are taking place to help finance the trip.

Mr Hoban has described his own time at the South African school as a "life- changing experience".

He added: "I am just dead thrilled by the whole thing - and the kids have a real buzz from it."

After his initial visit to the school, he said: "Throughout the development of this partnership the students and staff of both schools have been interested, generous, concerned and committed to achieving a link which has and will continue to have massive benefits to all."

2:59pm Thursday 24th January 2008

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