Water Sector Support Program

Drought has thrown Tanzania into crisis. While the country has one of the highest levels of natural water storage capacity per capita in Africa, more than 15 million people out of a population of 35 million are without a safe water supply. Moreover, the country relies heavily on rain-fed agriculture as a major contributor to its economy, with limited headwater storage for irrigated agriculture or for the hydro-electricity schemes. The current drought has reduced farm production and caused 18-hour per day electricity blackouts.

25m dam for hydro-electricity on the Kihansi River

The $900m Water Sector Support Program aims to build governance capacity in the Tanzanian water ministry, the National Urban Water Authority (NUWA), and prepare medium and long term plans that will improve the use of Tanzania’s water resources and set up a permanent supply of clean water.

Key activities of the Water Sector Support Program are

• river and lake basin management and development plans for five major rivers and four lakes
• management information system for the NUWA
  
• procedures and guidelines for environmental monitoring
• policy making

This program will give NUWA better skills and tools for effective long-term management of water which will help improve the water supply, hydropower, irrigation, and flood control.
The patchwork of international aid is evident in the list of donors who will contribute to this $900million program – the World Bank; the African Development Bank; the US Millennium Challenge Account; the governments of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany; and the NGOs WaterAid and UN Habitat.

It seems to me that this hodgepodge of aid organisations much be very inefficient! Imagine all the resources that get chewed up in coordination and accounting. I guess that this is probably inevitable where large scale projects address systemic issues.

I like the directness of a simple project like the School of St Jude because you give directly to the school and they spend the money directly on the kids.


The scarcity of water in Tanzania, is one reason why Mary-Elaine, a volunteer at St Judes, commented that buckets seem to be the very foundation upon which the country is built!

While individuals can make a big difference at the personal level, we really need to see assistance in capacity-building at the national level, if the country is to grow beyond the grinding cycle of perpetuating poverty. In Tanzania, we have reason for hope, because we see assistance given at both levels.

Tanzanian Demographic and Health Survey

The Tanzanian Demographic and Health Survey 2004 was based on interviews with over 10,000 women and over 2,600 men. It is one of a series funded by USAID to monitor progress towards the Millenium Goals to Fight Poverty.

St Jude's students bring gifts to local hospital

Here are some key figures from the survey:

• The fertility rate in Tanzania has not changed in ten years and Tanzanian women have an average of 5.7 children. This is one of the higher fertility rates in East Africa.
• More than 25% of young women age 15-19 have begun childbearing.
• Infant and child mortality decreased markedly in the past five years. The 2004-05 Tanzanian DHS found an under-five mortality rate of 112 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to a rate of 147 five years ago. This is one of the lowest mortality rates in East Africa, and yet one in nine children in Tanzania dies before his or her fifth birthday.
• Other child health indicators also improved. More infants are being exclusively breastfed now than in 1999. Vitamin A supplementation, which helps prevent blindness and infection, rose three-fold since the last survey with almost half of children under age 5 now receiving vitamin A supplements. Young children are also facing fewer nutritional challenges now than before.
• Doctors recommend that all children under age 5 and pregnant women sleep under insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) to prevent malaria. In Tanzania, only 16% of young children and 16% of pregnant women slept under an ITN the night before the survey.

These indicators are important measures that guide worldwide efforts to Make Poverty History. The grinding poverty of the poorest countries needs to be fought on many fronts simultaneously – the economy, education, health, infrastructure and governance all need systemic improvement.

The School of St Jude has taken the clear msision to Fight Poverty through Education. I will write tomorrow about a project that will make a big difference to Tanzania on the aspect of governance.

Three Peaks Challenge

While most of the us are preparing for the Christmas festive period of parties and holidays, 10 women from the USA and Australia will be preparing to become the first climbing party to summit three of Africa's highest mountains (Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Kenya and Mt Meru) in less than 3 weeks.


The challenge is raising money and awareness for the three peak issues affecting Africa today; environment, education and HIV/AIDS.

Project Director Chloe Chick founded the 3 Peaks challenge after time spent at The School of St Jude in 2004.

3 Peaks aims to support and encourage the work of grassroots organisations in Africa who are having a positive and immediate impact on the local community. St Jude's is just that and has provided huge amounts of motivation to get this event established - this is our small way of saying, we truly believe in and support what St Jude's is achieving.

The women are dedicating every spare moment to fundraising, training and getting themselves prepared for the challenge ahead. To date the project has raised over $220,000, but organisers are hoping to crack half a million dollars! The money raised for St Judes will go directly to the construction of the secondary school on the new school block that many have helped to buy.

St Jude's is looking forward to hosting the team and supporters in January and celebrating with them on their return to base camp on Australia Day 2007.

Corruption and croneyism

A conference was held on 9 December by the Tanzanian Government to map out new strategies to tackle corruption. The conference will engage the Tanzanian Government and the key donor countries who contribute 41% of the Government’s annual income.

President Jakaya Kikwete

The anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI) pulled out of Tanzania citing the government's reluctance to wage a vigorous campaign against corruption. This underlined growing international unease with the manner in which President Kikwete has allowed corruption to fester despite official rhetoric about his government's determination to eliminate it.

Donors' indictment of President Kikwete followed a series of questionable decisions in the past 12 months that have resulted in economic performance hitting the lowest point in a decade in spite of increased infusion of aid. The low point came when all hydroelectric power plants closed causing an 18-hour daily electricity rationing. The economy is literally on its knees after manufacturing ground to a halt thanks to irregular supply of power - now reduced to less than six hours per day, seven days a week.

The one-year-old Kikiwete administration intends to persuade the donors that it has what it takes to turn around the wobbly economy. The forum is set to discuss the revised National Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action Plans (Nacsap), which was dismissed by donors as weak and ambiguous. The conference is expected to set benchmarks upon which the future donor funding would be pegged.

At the local level, the School of St Jude operates in a society where corruption is common at all levels. The School is careful to monitor and measure the goods that are provided by all kinds of suppliers to ensure that they are not over-charging. The fees charged by local officials for services (visa renewal, postal deliveries) seem to be flexible acccording to the perceived ability to pay.

I guess that at the local level, this kind of petty graft is driven largely by the desperate poverty of most lives. But at the higher levels where national government contracts are handed to friends and family, the motives are more like power and greed. And given the bad smell that lingers around the US Bush administration’s connections with favoured companies like Haliburton, it is clear that this doesn’t just happen in the poorest countries.

I hope that Tanzania can make some substantive progress on reducing corruption. When incompetent friends are favoured in important deals (e.g. electricity supply) then the whole nation suffers. Suffering in the poorest countries is a desperate business of deprivation and death, not just the kind of deprivation in First World countries, where people with only one television can feel ‘poor’.

Meanwhile, The School of St Jude spends all donations directly on providing excellent education to the poorest children for free. And it takes steps to ensure that its funds are not eaten up by the croneyism and featherbedding of local suppliers and officials.

Sewing lady

I mentioned the Sewing Lady in an earlier post, now here is the story of how the School of St Jude came to have a Sewing Lady.

Repairing uniforms keeps the kids well-clothed

When Lynne Hodgson visited The School of St Jude school with a tour group she heard some of the children being chastised for the poor state of their uniforms. The School supplies all the uniforms as part of the sponsorship package and they expect them to be kept clean and in good repair.

Unfortunately, in some cases the child’s guardian may be a poorly sighted grandparent or overworked or alcoholic parent who has no time or ability to keep the uniform in good order. Of course the School is sympathetic sees that standards must be maintained.

Lynne came up with the great idea - a generous offer to pay the wages of a local woman who could come in every day and go through the classrooms and find sweaters with holes, shirts without buttons, dresses without ties and repair them all.

A great burden has been taken from many parents, the morale of many children has lifted and the uniform committee is greatly relieved now that Stephanie has been employed. And there is one more member of the local community with a full-time job!

This story has a particular impression on me because I think that sewing is a very skilled activity that is often unrecognised. It is often carried out as an act of love when we make things for the people close to us, or as a fundraiser. I will show you what I am making for one of my daughters in a day or two.

And you can browse my previous posts to read about the quilt that a Mennonite church in the US made as a fundraiser for the Mennonite church in Arusha. They raised $4,000 when they auctioned it.

So, we can enourage each other to use our skills to benefit others.

Milllenium goals

The Millenium Goals to end poverty have brought an urgency and focus to the multitude of aid programs. One of the Goals was to ensure that all children have access to free primary school education.


Great strides have been made towards this goal since it has become a priority. However, the World Bank's Annual Review of Aid Effectiveness 2006 notes that

Achieving high-quality development results takes time, but pressure to show results quickly can divert attention from the quality of results. For instance, the Millennium Development Goal of ensuring universal completion of primary education by 2015 has spurred massive efforts to increase enrollments. These rapid increases are welcome, but in many countries they have come at the expense of attention to learning outcomes. In Uganda, for example, access to education has improved greatly, but there are now 94 children per classroom and three students have to share a single textbook. Yet, the experience of India, Ghana and Uruguay has shown that it is possible to combine increased access with gradual gains in learning outcomes. This requires careful strategic planning and strong commitment to focus on learning outcomes from the outset. However, only about one-third of primary education sector operations assessed by IEG explicitly aimed to improve learning outcomes.

Of course, it is likely that these deficiencies will be fixed in time and more teachers and resources will be provided so that primary education is not a token affair.

So I'm really glad that the School of St Jude has emphasised quality education right from the start. At the School, class sizes are under 30, there is a well-stocked library and a computer lab. A cooked lunch and morning tea are provided.

No wonder the children excelled in the recent national skills examination.

Blade Runner St Jude

There is something surreal about the School of St Jude. In some ways it seems entirely familiar – kindy classes wear lion masks and present little plays; older classes go on excursions to worthwhile places. But then, something odd shows up in the school newsletter, like the wrong answer to a question in Blade Runner and you realise that this school cannot be quite like the schools we are familiar with.

• How many schools do you know that have 15,000 kids lined up at the gates on Fridays in October, seeking to win a place in the school?
• How many schools in your area have a sewing lady who spends each day mending and repairing the clothes of the kids?
• What schools do you know that take only one child per family?
• And how many schools offer free lunches – OK, we know that British schools do cheap lunches, but that is the land of Monty Python and Harry Potter afterall. And Jamie Oliver has shown us how bad the ‘food’ is.

The School of St Jude is for the poorest of the poor. Children who come from homes with more than two rooms, or houses with floors or window glass are not eligible. This school is for people who are REALLY poor. Nevertheless, the school encourages the children to be generous and giving.

Each year the school celebrates the Feast Day of St Jude Thaddeus (28th October).

Father Julio presides over a great celebration where each class gives a presentation. Then there is communion for those who are Catholic and blessings for those of other faiths.

Communion and blessings

During the service while Fr Julio was giving communion to the confirmed Catholics and the staff choir sang, he asked a number of teachers from various religions, tribes and countries to bless all the other students. It is a wonderfully uniting part of the service and again we thank Fr Julio for bringing everyone together so superbly.

A key element of the day is that each child brings a gift to be given to those in need in nearby orphanages and hospitals.

Although the children in this school come from very poor families, sometimes having only one meal a day and sleeping three to a bed, I feel that they need to understand how important it is to give to others. At our St Jude’s Day celebration, every student is asked to bring a gift to say thanks for all that they have to be grateful - their families, their friends, their teachers, their sponsors, the school’s donors, the cooks and cleaners, the drivers, the administration staff, the groundsmen and the guards. Every person in every section is a vital cog in The School of St Jude machine. So it is on this day that the children get the chance to show their gratitude.

Gifts from grateful families

Here are some of masses of gifts given by students’ families – the baskets were over flowing with sugar, soap, eggs, vegetables, fruit, cloth, salt, flour, rice and even live chickens. After the school community celebration, students took the gifts to local orphanages and hospitals.

Children distribute gifts in local hospital

The School of St Jude aims to fight poverty through education. It does this in a material way by providing excellent education to the poorest children. It also teaches that a generous spirit does not require material wealth.

May your generous spirit move you to lend your support to the School of St Jude.