March 23, 2017
A month in Tanzania flies by. Up first was the Kilimanjaro Half Marathon, followed by three trainings and several important meetings in Tanzania’s business capital, Dar es Salaam. In the midst of this serious work, I’ve had a ton of fun with our scholars. I even worked with our Alum, Richard Augustino on college applications, which was a first for me!
As soon as I landed, I joined our staff in hosting TEAM TFFT visitors who came for the Kilimanjaro Marathon. I was also in some serious need of altitude training for myself. With a 4am wake up, TEAM TFFT was ready to rock, and we made it through the literal up and down of 21km on Kili. We are grateful to the incredible individuals who traveled over to tackle this challenge (shoutout to Kautia and Aileen who were also 2014 RIDETZ riders) and everyone who donated and encouraged us in this journey.
After a week of sharing our work with our guests, it was time to roll up my sleeves for a series of trainings.
As a grantee of One Mobile Projector Per Trainer Training, facilitators came in from Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and the U.S. to train us on how to use video as a tool in the classroom.
Next, it thrilled me to geek out for an entire week with our team participating in a training on psychosocial support through REPSSI. We have been studying the dynamic relationship between the emotional and social aspects of a person’s life. Ensuring there is a child-centered and collaborative approach including the children’s entire family and community surrounding them is incredibly important. REPSSI uses the wheel model, which illustrates each child’s need for support in five main categories: physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual support. The child is in the center and if one spoke is missing, the positive development of the child is hindered.
Last week I got to dive into a seminar on Tanzanian Labor Laws with Melissa. Yes, I really mean got to. I love this stuff.
Meetings to connect with our Tanzanian funding partners took me to Dar es Salaam to garner support for the Lighting the Way Campaign we just launched. Seeing and gaining support from our Tanzanian business community on this exciting new endeavor inspires and gives us confidence. We have good company in our belief that we must go beyond rudimentary education and invest significantly in QUALITY educational resources!
As always, time with our scholars is the highlight. I came bearing lots of homemade valentines. TFFT family members from all over the world made and mailed in valentines for our TFFT Scholars to receive. This is a tradition we all love. It kind of feels like I am Santa as the glitter, stickers, and pom-poms delight our kids! They made a point this year of saying they want me to bring supplies next year so they can make these types of valentines to send back to their friends all over the world.
The Career Day with 600 students at Star High that was a true success. I also attended Academic Progress Day at Usa River Academy and Visiting Day at Arusha Modern School. Finally, thanks to technology, our scholars were able to celebrate World Book Day with 5th and 6th graders from Wickhambreaux Church of England Primary School. The read folk stories from the U.K. and Tanzania to each other and talked about their favorite characters.
All and all, my month has been nonstop, filled with the precious smiles and hearts of the young gems we work with, while also getting down to business, building our capacity, training our boundary partners, and pushing forward on our effort to provide QUALITY education. Together we are creating a community of learners and leaders.
Until next time… Meghann