For our children to succeed in life, they must have a good education. However many had traumatic early lives with disrupted schooling. In Tanzania primary school starts at seven years, and is both free and compulsory, so we send the children to the local school.
However, local schools are very crowded with often over 100 children in one class
We are now using our own classrooms to run a high standard
pre-school, which will be expanded to take in fee-paying children from the community. This also benefits from our western volunteers who get actively involved.
We have a library with over 1000 books – mostly in English, but some in Kiswahili which are very popular.
There is also a computer room, re-equipped in November 2013 with desktops from a Dutch sponsor and laptops donated by the Post Office in UK. As the laptops can run off batteries, they are invaluable for providing reliability.
There are sewing machines, facilities for bicycle maintenance and ongoing training in the agricultural project on our land.
Depending on their ‘Standard 7’ school leaving exam results, we either send the children on to secondary school or to suitable vocational training, which may be back in Dar es Salaam.
Good secondary education is scarce and our abler students are therefore sent to a boarding school nearby, which costs no more than keeping them at home in the Village.
