I realize it has been a while since I wrote a blog and I am sorry for that. Over Easter several folks asked my folks some questions that made me realize I need to give everyone an update on the school, myself and things in Tanzania in general. Instead of dumping all of that information (and making me stare at a blank screen trying to figure out how to cover it all) I am going to break them into three different blogs over a several weeks. I will start with the most important topic: The School.
The school opened for our fourth official(we were a preschool before getting our school accreditation) school year early in January. We added an additional 30 students (21 pictured above) to our preschool roles bringing our total school enrollment to 160 students. We added grade Standard IV and an additional teacher, Carolina. She will be working with our preschool grades.
While there has been a number of news articles about COVID spread in Tanzania especially the South African variant, I get weekly news from the School Director and Headmaster that it has not affected our school teachers, staff or students for which we are thankful.
Last year, we built our fourth classroom building at the site giving us the room for this years additional class and one for next year as well before we need more classroom space. The latest building incorporated a solar system during construction, sliding windows that keep those of us over three feet tall from cracking our skulls on the metal framed windows sticking out on the walking porch and transparent roof sheets at key locations to hopefully help control bats which are present in every Tanzanian building.
This year we were supposed to build a dining hall so the kids will have a dedicated place to meet as a school and to eat without having to sit on the ground. After that we planned to build an office space with Teacher’s lounge and a space to secure Government standardized tests.
Not sure how they are going to handle the tests this year without that space, the government requires a room with no windows and only one door for an armed military guard to secure. Yes they take cheating that seriously there. This year our Standard IV class will take the first Government Standardized test at Tumaini Evangelical Pre & Primary School. We have already paid our fees for the test and are very excited to see how our students are doing against the government standards and other schools.
We also added some great equipment last year from the playground equipment (one piece pictured above) to the better printer than can affordably handle the volume of printing needed for monthly tests. Both of these projects were funded by special donations from the Methodist Men and Deborah Circle at Mauldin UMC. In addition the Youth Group at Zion UMC funded our Christmas gift program (pictured below) and individual donations have helped purchase desks and cabinets for our new classroom building.
Unfortunately we are still not scheduling groups over to visit the school because of the constantly changing rules in the world about travel safety. I have heard from three different groups that have traveled over to visit projects for a couple of weeks. One team had several people to become infected with COVID and possibly one death caused by their infection. Two other individuals went over and one had no problem getting tested to return to the USA and the other got stuck waiting on her test and had to extend her trip by several days.
What is coming up or needed right now at the school: Funding Ideas. COVID has affected everything and that includes our funding to assist in the operation of the school. We have increased our monthly contribution to the school to help offset increasing costs of operating two routes to pick up all the students instead of one, more food, the additional teacher and more classroom costs with adding another 30 students. In the past, there have been some great in person events to help with these costs like golf tournaments and 5K runs. As we look forward to meeting more costs every year at the school we are feeling the crunch in planning after losing those events. If anyone would be willing to host fundraising events, especially virtual, please contact me as I am an old dude with no new ideas in the virtual world for fundraising.
Please pray for our fundraising, our Standard IV students standardized tests, our teachers, our students, the community and Tanzania in General. Thank you.
