Esuvat

Meet Esuvat, who was sponsored to come to the School of St Jude in 2004 by a Rotary Club in Australia.


Esuvat lives with her family in a poor village.


Like everyone else, she does her share of chores – carrying water is a daily task. Unicef reports that the unavailability of water within a reasonable distance correlates directly to low rate of school attendance and high rate of drop out by girls. This is due to the disproportionate amount of domestic work, such as water fetching, that rests on girls.


School gives her a good education as well as friendships.




At the School of St Jude, sponsorship includes clothing (uniform), meals and bus transport. Esuvat uses the crowded school buses to get to school.



After school, she takes the bus and then walks home.



At home, her daily chores are waiting.


Esuvat started at the School of St Jude in 2004. In the Std 4 exams at the end of 2005, she placed first in the district of 17,000 students. This very bright girl from a very poor family will have the opportunity to reach her high potential and contribute her talents to the future of her country, thanks to the generosity of sponsors, donors and helpers world-wide.


Esuvat is only one of the many bright children who live in a cycle of continuing poverty. The School of St Jude aims to Fight Poverty Through Education. With our help, their future will be brighter.

Success!

The financial accounts of the School of St Jude are now online. They show that fundraising has doubled in the last year. In 2005 the school raised $547,213, and in 2006 the figure was $1,081,778.

Because the school is growing by 150 students each year, the fundraising target will increase each year until the building program is completed in 2012 when the school will have about 2000 students from kindergarten to Year 12.

Here is Angela Bailey, the first principal of the school with the three students who enrolled in 2002.

2002 - the school started with three students

And here are the students and staff in 2006.

2006 - the school has 700 students + 150 staff

Major expenses in 2006 were the purchase of 30 acres at Usa River for a second campus and the construction of the new 10 classroom block at the Moshono campus.

These large goals were achieved, thanks to growing support from worldwide networks.

Nothing succeeds like success, and this school is a great success story. No wonder donors are happy to contribute.

Exam time

Tanzania is working to improve its educational services. The biggest boost to education in Tanzania has come from massive debt relief that has allowed the government to remove school fees for primary schools. A lot more children can now attend primary school.

The next task is to lift the standards, especially in small village schools across the country. This video clip, taken this year in a typical village school in northern Tanzania, shows the limited resources available in many schools.

To monitor educational standards, every Std 4 child in Tanzania sits a national exam in five subjects - Science, Maths, English, Kiswahili (the national language) and Social Studies (which is a Geography, Civics and History mix). Children at the School of St Jude did exceptionally well last year – they took five of the top 20 places in the Northern district of 17,000 kids!

Std 4 exams, November 2006

This was achieved because the school selects capable children from the poorest families – kids who would probably not go to school at all, or who would get a few years of basic education in a typical village school.

Then the work begins! The Std 4 children who sat the exam this November started working extra hours way back in January. This meant that teachers, drivers and cooks have been putting in extra time all year. As Gemma says,

I would like to thank all the drivers who would work tirelessly driving all the Std 4 kids home each evening, the cooks who would feed them after school before they started their late classes and of course all the teachers and admin staff who worked in making sure that all the students could reach their full potential. It was amazing to have children running up to me telling me that they thought that the exams were easy!! I NEVER thought an exam I did in the past was easy and so it was a thrill to actually see kids excited about going in to do their exams!

The difference that an education at the School of St Jude will make to the children, their extended families, and the whole community is immeasurable. In comparison with these benefits, our gifts of money and time seem small.

Christmas Day

Well, we have opened the presents, eaten a lunchtime feast (provided mostly by the supermarket deli) and had a snooze. It must be Christmas!

We are having a very quiet Christmas in Brisbane with my mother who is quite unwell. It is not a big celebratory Christmas for us this year - but it is exactly the Christmas that we need to have. I'm glad to be here at this point of need in my mother's life.

I find my thoughts are turning to incidents in childhood where she took care of my sister and I. Now we are taking care of her. It feels right.

I wish that everyone could be where they need to be at Christmas, and that they can give something to others in need.

Builders, always the builders

Here we are, just days before Christmas. Australian school children have started their long summer holidays and Sydney traffic is easing.

The School of St Jude is on holiday too. Well, the kids are on holiday, but the builders, a constant presence on the site, are still hard at it.

The new secondary building at Moshono

This holiday, the builders are busy at work on both campuses – Moshono and Usa River. At Moshono, this beauty is under construction. It will have ten classrooms, two seminar rooms, two computer labs, staff rooms, offices and an amenities block!

Plans for the secondary building

This will be ready for use by 9 January 2007 when the new school year starts. In the longer term, this building will be for secondary students at the Moshono campus. But that won’t happen till 2009 when the Usa River campus is ready to accommodate three streams of each primary class.

A lot of planning, a lot of sheer hard work. An a lot of caring support from thousands around the world are bringing this school into existence.

As you share your Christmas festivities with loved ones, you can remember that the School of St Jude is one example of goodness and generosity in this world. Something to be grateful for.

Bottom Shaking

Dance in Tanzania is a vigorous business. At the School of St Jude, you are always assured of an audience in hysterics when a well-performed traditional Tanzanian dance is presented - there is so much bottom shaking and hip thrusting that the kids watching are screaming with delight! And the 4B students (below) certainly earned their applause at the school celebration of St Jude’s Day in October.

Class 4b students dance

Tourists who visit Tanzania can see a variety of traditional dances that vary from tribe to tribe. The Wa-Makonde vibrate their bottoms in a Sindimba frenzy. The Wa-Zaramo bounce in undulating Mdundiko processions. The unique Wa-Maasai "leaping dance" is accompanied only by the rhythmic chant of their deep voices, seen here on YouTube. Here is a Maasai women’s dance, also on YouTube.

Dance also appears in Tanzanian cultural festivals.

Binti Leo performers

In July 2006, ‘Nkhomanile’ by Binti Leo Performers was presented at the Festival of the Dhow countries. This dance is the tradtional story of the warrior queen, Nduna Nkomanile warrring with German colonial powers is brought to life by energetic music and performance. Nduna Nkomanile was such a threat to German power that when she was finally caught, she was publicly hanged. ‘Nkhomanile’ is produced by two Women’s theatre groups: Binti Leo and Bagamoyo Women Artists.

You can see children at St Jude’s learning a tradtional Tanzanian dance in the classroom on YouTube .

It is great to see this school, run by an Australian with the help of volunteers from around the world, bringing high-quality education that respects the culture of the children who will be the leaders of the next generation of Tanzanians.

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.