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MrBeast's Ten-School Project: Rebuilding Classrooms, Wells, and Meal Programs on Four Continents

MrBeast ミスタービースト · ▶ 15:57 · 12 min read
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Overview

In this video, MrBeast (Jimmy) and his crew set out to build or rebuild ten schools around the world. He frames the project with a figure he cites at the start: more than 200 million children, he says, lack access to a safe school. His stated goal is to go beyond putting up buildings. The team also wants to feed students for years, keep children out of illegal child labor, and give communities clean water so they stop drinking contaminated water. Across the stops, one theme keeps coming back. A classroom by itself is often not enough, so each site gets whatever else the team decides is blocking the children's education, such as a well, a kitchen, teacher housing, a bridge, or a bus.

12 min read

The First School in Ghana: Demolition, a New Campus, and a Well

The first stop is Ghana. Jimmy shows the old school, a structure he calls a "rust bucket," and says it was so dangerous that government officials had ordered it torn down. The crew, including Chandler, helps knock it down before the children are brought in to see the new school the team built to replace it. Jimmy also mentions that a new well is being built within walking distance.

Refurbishing a Second School and Housing Its Teachers

The next school did not need to be demolished, so the team fully refurbished it. More than 250 children attend, and Jimmy says it was "crazy" that they had been studying in those conditions. The renovation included repainting, a new ceiling, new walls, and a new floor. The team also added two brand-new classrooms, and the video shows the children seeing them for the first time. Jimmy points out that some of the children had never played with a toy before and were thrilled just to be playing. He expects that school attendance will rise and that the students will have much more fun.

The principal told Jimmy that two of the teachers were spending a third of their salary on getting to work and driving up to an hour each day. Jimmy called that brutal and unsustainable. The team built apartments near the school, and the two teachers, Joseph and Emmanuel, are shown seeing them for the first time. At first they assume they will share one unit, but Jimmy tells them each has an apartment of his own. He thanks them for being great teachers.

Clean Water, Sanitation, and Five Years of Lunches

Jimmy says that when the team arrived, he noticed something he "just couldn't ignore." For more than a decade the whole village had taken its water from a river, and according to the video nearly 80% of the population, children included, has parasitic worms in their intestines. The team drilled a new well that serves the school and also the hundreds of people living nearby. They added bathrooms, so students no longer have to relieve themselves in the woods, and sinks supplied by the new well.

The team also built a kitchen equipped for daily school lunches. Jimmy tells the school that every student will receive a free lunch every school day for the next five years. He asks a staff member to pick any date on a calendar, and the staff member picks May 2030. Jimmy says meals will be covered through that date. The staff member, who says they are out of words, then announces the news to the students. Jimmy credits the Rockefeller Foundation with helping on this part of the project.

Jimmy puts the spending at more than half a million dollars on this compound alone, not counting any other school. He expects the total to pass $1 million by the end of the year, all of it going into the school and the surrounding community. He describes the structures as something that will affect "generations to come." He adds that the community gave him the title "Chief of Development" because the team built so much there. A local representative tells him he did not have to go this far and thanks him.

Replacing a Building Older Than Jimmy

At the next school, Jimmy asks the children to leave the classroom. The building is older than he is, he explains, and its roof could collapse on students while they are learning, which he calls completely unacceptable. The old school is torn down and replaced with a new two-story building. According to the video, the new school is twice the size of the old one, so more than 300 children can attend, and it has eight large, fully furnished classrooms. Right beside it, the team built a solar-powered well with a water storage facility. Jimmy says it serves the school and roughly a thousand people in the surrounding community.

Here Jimmy states the philosophy behind the project directly. The team is "not here to check boxes and build schools," he says, but "to fundamentally change the lives of the communities." The video then connects the effort to child labor, arguing that a safe school keeps children from being forced into illegal work. It presents this as part of the mission of Feastables, MrBeast's chocolate brand. According to the video, Feastables pays its farmers a living-income reference price, audits for child labor on its farms and remediates it, and has built schools in eleven different communities for children in Ghana.

A Flooding School Rebuilt From Scratch

The next school, the video says, was so run down that learning there was nearly impossible. A staff member explains that the classrooms flood when it rains and turn muddy. Over the following months the team built a new school from the ground up with seven classrooms, each supplied with new desks. Jimmy notes that the teachers had not let any of the children inside before filming, so this is their first time in the building.

Eight months earlier, the team had built a kitchen for the old school on this site, and students will receive free food every school day for five years. When someone jokes that the free food will draw more children and the school will need more classrooms, Jimmy replies that this is exactly why they built seven.

A Feeding Program One Year Later, and Ten New Classrooms

The next stop is a school where the team set up a feeding program a year earlier. Jimmy reports that the program is still running and that students get a free lunch every school day. He says attendance has risen 10% because of the meal program, "and climbing." While filming that earlier video, he had also seen the condition of the classrooms and decided the team needed to do something. This time they built ten new classrooms, which together count as just one of the ten schools in this video. The children chant "New class!" on the way to see them. Jimmy says that without the new building these students would have gone to school every day afraid of their own classrooms, and he urges them to stay in school.

The Town's First High School and an Office for the Principal

Jimmy then moves to a community where students lack a school of their own. The whole town shares a single school covering middle school through high school, and the team plans to build the town's first high school. The principal, the video says, has had to work out of her car.

This segment shows more of the construction itself. The walls are built individually and then linked together. Jimmy admits he had pictured school construction as "a hammer and a nail or something." After raising three walls, he notes that the school is coming together quickly, then clarifies that only the outline is up and concrete still has to be poured, assuring viewers that "we're building nice schools." With about fifty volunteers, the crew lifts the two halves of the roof into place. There is a running joke that Nolan is too short to reach it, and Jimmy remarks on how heavy the roof is. The video describes the structure as a "next-gen building material" that will be filled with concrete so the school can stand for generations.

While the crew reinforces the walls with concrete, Jimmy surprises the principal. Speaking in Spanish, she confirms that she has worked in her car for the past decade because she had no office. The team built her an office next to the new school, and she tells Jimmy he is going to make her cry. The last addition at this site is a new soccer field. Jimmy thanks the Televisa Foundation for helping build it.

Two Elevated Schools in the Ecuadorian Rainforest

Jimmy calls the next two schools possibly the hardest of the project. They are deep in Ecuador's rainforest, in communities he describes as left to fend for themselves. Reaching them took two flights, a three-hour boat ride, and an hour and a half of off-road driving.

At the site, the team learned that rain was the main barrier to learning. A teacher says, in Spanish, that teaching was impossible when it rained. Jimmy explains that tin roofs make it impossible to hear anyone inside during rain, and a local speaker adds that students cannot learn without proper conditions. When Jimmy asks how high the water gets, he is told it rises above the knee. He responds that this goes beyond interfering with learning and is simply dangerous.

The team replaced the old, weathered buildings with two new elevated schools designed to keep students safe from the rain. According to the video, more than fifty children can now return to school because of the better conditions. The team also replaced a dangerous wooden bridge with a safer metal one, so students no longer have to be afraid on their way to class. Jimmy says the bridge will serve the hundreds of students these schools educate over their lifetime.

An Outdoor Learning Center at Hope Creek Academy

The next stop is in the United States, at Hope Creek Academy, a school for students with neurodivergent needs. A staff member says the school tries to give students opportunities to grow and excel in a safe space. The video argues that for these students, the best learning environment is outside the classroom, and it cites data showing that neurodivergent children learn better outdoors, in the wilderness, than when crowded into a room.

MrBeast partnered with Lowe's on this project, and the video says the Lowe's employees in red shirts volunteered on their own time. A staff member describes the center as a new kind of environment that gives students "permission to play with nature," and Jimmy calls it "an earthly version of a playground." The crew builds features including a playhouse. After seeing the children explore the finished space, a staff member says it is more open and natural than what they had and offers much more room for imagination and creativity.

The Final School in India: Classrooms and a Bus

The tenth school is in India, and the video describes it as badly overcrowded. With more than 400 students, the school has only six classrooms, and students say they do not have classrooms of their own. The team built a new three-story school.

Many students walk more than an hour in the dark on busy, dangerous roads to get to school, so the team also bought the school its own bus. A staff member says they are very happy that the students, especially the girls, will now arrive safely. Another speaker relays that the students are excited to move into the new building and thanks the foundation for giving them such a large building.

Totals and Jimmy's Closing

At the end, Jimmy speaks directly to viewers. He says the team spent more than $3 million on the ten schools and estimates they will teach more than 18,000 students over time. He also lists the wells for drinking water and the buses and bridges that make travel safer, describing these as help "not just now, but for generations to come." He credits viewers for making the work possible, saying the children's, teachers', and communities' lives changed because people watch the videos. He admits he is "not the best with this kind of stuff" but thanks the audience from the bottom of his heart. He closes with the hope that this is only the beginning and that, over the history of the MrBeast channel, the team can save and change millions more lives. The video ends by thanking T-Mobile for helping make it possible and mentioning its Project 10Million education program.

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