SCHOOLGIRLS from Oxford helped teach African villagers English during a charity trip to Zanzibar.

The 12 Headington School pupils visited Zanzibar for two weeks to help the Zanzibar Action Project (ZAP), which provides support for a rural fishing community.

During their trip they helped villagers with extra IT and English lessons and taught at several nursery schools.

Seventeen-year-old Jessie Tucker, one of Headington’s International Baccalaureate students, said: “It has been an incredible experience and extremely eye-opening.

“Working with ZAP has been a rewarding and inspiring experience and I truly believe their cause is a worthwhile one.

“It was wonderful to meet students who have been sponsored by ZAP and get to know them. They all have such high hopes.”

Over the past three years Headington pupils have managed to raise nearly £10,000 for ZAP.

The IB and A-Level students spent nearly two weeks of July in Jambiani, a fishing community with a population of around 8,000 in south-east Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean.

Vanessa Sinclair, the school’s community liaison officer, said: “The girls’ voluntary work in UK nursery schools before they left enabled them to teach some very creative and imaginative lessons in the village nurseries.

“During their visit the girls meet the students they have sponsored, who introduce them to their families and village life as well as supporting them to teach in the nursery schools.”