When the idea of naming a school in Ethiopia after Rebecca Zammit Lupi was proposed, the father of the 15-year-old, who died of a rare cancer, “literally glowed for a moment” as he found a measure of comfort in the project and its cause.

Photojournalist Darrin Zammit Lupi had been looking for ways to honour the memory and preserve the legacy of his daughter, who lost a gruelling battle with an aggressive form of bone cancer in January, further exacerbated by the pandemic. 

“In my journey of self-healing after her death, I had been trying to see how to generate some form of positive energy from this impossible situation,” Zammit Lupi said.

Naming a junior secondary school in Africa after her could not have been more ideal: Rebecca, also known as Becs, was an enthusiastic student, who campaigned for online education for sick children in hospital during her time in Rainbow Ward, and who had developed a “natural” interest in the continent, fostered by her father’s continuous work on migration of Africans to Europe.

Rebecca was only five months old when her father visited Africa for the first time to attempt the Kilimanjaro Challenge in 2006. He took his daughter up to the summit with him in a photo and later told her they would do the challenge together.

The school will be built with funds raised through the Sigma Foundation for a three-tier project, which has already financed a primary school and collected almost all the €94,000 for a kindergarten in Jimma-Bonga.

The foundation’s fundraising adventures ground to halt due to COVID-19 but are now picking up with Camino di Santiago and Mount Toubkal expeditions planned for May.

Meanwhile, Zammit Lupi has already managed to raise €16,000 and counting for the school in his daughter’s name in just three weeks through a crowdfunding page he set up and social media posts.

These funds have kick-started the project and the ball is already rolling, said Sigma Foundation chief philanthropy officer Keith Marshall.

While the costs are still being worked out, experience shows that the project would require no less than €100,000. But he is confident the rest of the money will be collected so the school can be up and running by September 2022.

Thirteen expeditions over 15 years have already raised €1 million for 10 major projects mainly in Ethiopia and some in Kenya, using the Kilimanjaro Challenge platform.

Marshall said the situation in Ethiopia was paradoxical: “While there is abject poverty and life is almost meaningless because they are so accustomed to and accepting of death, the level of happiness is something else.

“They are happy – so who is the richer,” Marshall asked, saying the idea was to keep these children safe and educated.

The schools will cater for around 700 students, “putting them on the conveyor belt of education that is also being bridged to university level to ensure they do not fall off into a ravine along the way”.

Things seems to have come full circle for Zammit Lupi, who had planned to do the Camino di Santiago fundraiser but pulled out when, just a week after joining up, his daughter was diagnosed with a one-in-a-million illness, Ewing’s Sarcoma.

Following her death, to help him navigate the pain, he intended to do the full 800-km trek on his own. Now, instead, he will join the team to raise funds for the school in his daughter’s name as “the misaligned stars start to realign”.

The kindergarten is being named after Karl Pace, who died after a fire broke out on his boat, and who had pulled himself out of a bad situation in life to become a “beacon of hope”, while the primary school takes the name of philanthropist Victor Licari. “Even death can have a silver lining and lead to great things,” he continued. “They showed courage and fortitude and led by example.

Zammit Lupi added: “While there are words in the English language to describe children who lose parents and husbands who lose wives, there is nothing to describe a parent who has lost a child – because it cannot be described.

“They say you never move on; you can just move forward. I know I will never get over it, but this is helping me learn how to live with it if it helps kids of this and future generations in a continent that is close to my heart and where it is needed.”

Donations can be made on crowdfunding page https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-build-the-becs-zammit-lupi-secondary-school/ or to Revolut and BOV Mobile on +356 99420469, where any donors should note the money is for the school.