Yes, 2022 was another chaotic year dealing with elements of a world still in turmoil of COVID, Russia invading the Ukraine, Inflation, Fuel and Food shortages around the world because various issues and a census in Tanzania. Like the world around it, our school had a lot going on. Fortunately, we did it more civilly than the world at large or at least I hope we did.
First our school added the Standard 5 grade in January 2022 and we grew to 191 students in 2022. We also added some staff, Teacher Isack, Teacher Innifer (mid year to replace Josephine) and Max our accountant/secretary. As mentioned in the middle of the year we said goodbye to Teacher Josephine as she took a job as leader of a children’s program for a church.
Financially, we added another partner in the USA that is directly sponsoring students at our school call Outside the Wall International Ministries. While B2BU Ministries, Inc. has worked to build the school and to fund the operations, we have not done direct sponsorships of individual students. OTWIM has been around our school and has been involved in several ministries for community and has now started direct sponsorships of individual students at our school. We are thankful for the growth in the ministry.
Speaking of the financing side of things, we continue to work with our Tanzania partners to make sure we as a team are accountable for all money the school gets. The following graphic shows how we are spending the money entrusted to our stewardship. If you want more detailed information please feel free to contact me at steveintanzania@gmail.com.
We have continued many of the things that make our school different and stand out.
We are an Evangelical school with morning worship and devotion services and weekly Bible classes.
We provide two meals a day. Morning is porridge (in the picture) and the lunch meal is beans with rice/ugali/corn.
We do monthly testing and reward top students (top three students from Standard 4 pictured).
We have continued our annual Spelling and Mathematics Competition. You can find out more by reading this episode of my blog: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/11/21/competition-will-push-you-to-do-more/
We have continued to give our Christmas gifts to our students and staff. This was done on the last day of school. If you would like to see more pictures of this or find out what all we give them please go to the following blog episode: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/12/16/2022-christmas-gifts-for-students-staff/
We also continue to provide textbooks at the school for our students (not common in Tanzania), maintaining our buildings and equipment, use our solar power system and TVs to show educational videos and lots of little things like showering the kids with God’s love every chance we can.
This year we also added some new things and had some great events. One of the big items is the building of our “last” school building. I put the last in quotation marks because this building will provide classes for the last two grades we need to add to be a full primary school. So the school has all the buildings required to be a school. This does not mean we are done working with the school and possibly we may build other buildings. But we are taking a year off to focus more on setting up maintenance protocols so that what we have will last.
We started extra curricular clubs to reward students with a certain grade level (70 or above). We did four clubs: Conversational English, Reading, Games and Art. To find out more check out this blog: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/06/08/extracurricular-clubs/
We have taken the first step in detecting learning issues with our students. We conducted basic eye exams to see who needs to go get checked out by a doctor in town and possibly get eyeglasses. We identified 8 students and hope to get them into town late January for full eye exams. Find out more here: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/11/07/we-continue-to-have-a-lot-going-on/
We started having friendly football (European) with other schools. To see more check out this blog: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/05/02/friendly-football-soccer-match/
We also added a celebration for our Pre-Unity students graduating to Standard 1. It was a fun celebration and one we plan to continue. See more pictures and read about here: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/12/05/preschool-graduation/
I threw myself a big party for my 55th Birthday so all the students could just have a day of fun. The blog about all the fun is here: http://steveandbarnabas.com/2022/06/15/party-time/
We also started a sister school program with Mauldin United Methodist Kindergarten. We have started exchanging cards and videos between the classes.
Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. and I thank all of you who have followed my blog about the school. I hope you enjoy following the adventures. If you would like to participate by supporting myself or the school financially please visit my support page here: http://steveandbarnabas.com/support/
Thanks Mr Steve I hope you doing well God help you And your family and your friends and all Americans And give hi pastor Doug and Frank And all members