Fund Study Camps for 35 Students in Tanzania

Dear Girls Ed and Project Wezesha Supporters,

We're happy to bring you an update on our recent December study camp. It was such a pleasure to be part of it with my friends and Girls Ed supporters, Shelly (from Utah) and Patsy & Katia (from Minnesota).

Many of you contributed to this cause because you are friends, family or fans of the amazing Patsy! We are so grateful to Patsy for her fundraising efforts leading up to this camp. Because so many of you responded to her invitation, this entire camp was fully funded.

It was a small measure of gratitude to be able to share several Tanzanian experiences with her on this trip. Patsy has been supporting our work for years and it was profoundly meaningful to introduce her and her daughter Katia to our students, friends and partners in Kigoma. As you might have guessed, everyone loved them so much! 

We were able to offer our signature rigorous study camp to a cohort of 12 students who are entering their final year of secondary school this month, as well as a group of 7 students who sought to continue improving their English for success in their teacher-education programs!

For this 4-week study camp, you contributed to the salaries of the 8 teachers (see photo) who taught daily to deliver content in the secondary students' core subjects, including History, English, Kiswahili, Biology, Physics, and Math. These teachers are regular teachers at our host school - Kichangachui Secondary School. They bring exceptional teaching methods and resources that our students don't often encounter in their village schools - such as science labs and textbooks.

During the camp, our students live on site in dorms -- thanks to you, we were able to cover Mama Amina's salary. She is on site all month as our cook and the matron who stays with the girls. They rely so much on her for their physical and emotional wellbeing. We also had a chance to visit the girls in their dorms, where they happy to give us a tour and show us their approach to making friendship bracelets.

We had a great Christmas celebration with a feast prepared by Mama Amina and some of the students, followed by a trip to the lake shore where students enjoyed soda (a special event drink) and dancing. We all had a blast! We also organized a special event to honor Patsy and Shelly for their contributions to Girls Ed and Project Wezesha over the years. There was an amazing feast again, plus speeches, songs, dance, and even a skit about the inequalities between girl and boy students.

Starting this month, 12 of these students begin Form 4 -- their last year of secondary school. They will participate in one final study camp in June and then take the national examinations that determine if they go on to high school in 2020. Evidence over the past 3 years during which we've offered study camps shows that these camps make all the difference for students attending under-resourced government schools in this region -- higher class rank, increased rates of success on national exams, higher likelihood of being admitted to high school, and improved English proficiency. Just this week, we received the results from our recent Form 4 grads' national exams. We are so delighted to see how many of our girls will be going on to high school!

Thank you for being part of this tremendous impact! We'd love to have your continued support. Please be sure to follow us on Facebook and learn more about what we do in Tanzania and Pakistan on our website. Let your friends know about us and how they can support our work. 

You can contribute to this campaign in the coming months to help us fund our June 2019 camp. If you’d like to contribute in other ways, we’d love your support as we strive to cover the fees of our girls moving into post-secondary studies (e.g., high school, vocational school, certificate programs). Send us an email to find out more: info@girlsed.org.

Thank you so much for your support!

Sincerely,

Rai Farrelly
& the Girls Ed Team 

Links:

• Interview with Girls Ed Student