Education Tanzania, United Republic of Project #29300

Virtues for Holistic Child Development in Tanzania

by Virtues Project International Association

Project Report | Jan 22, 2021
Your Support Led to Great Impact in 2020

By Godwin Mongi | Project Leader

Thank you for your generous support. We deeply value your giving in the time of global unprecedented pandemic that affected almost everyone in all parts of the world. We feel valued that children in our community remained special to your heart.

As 2020 has come to a close, we want to let you know how your support has made a huge impact for the children and schools in our community:

5 schools - 880 children (480 primary school and 400 in secondary schools) were part of our character education and life skills clubs using the Virtues Project model to emphasize safe schools and positive relations amongst teachers and students, as a means to eliminate corporal punishment. 480 children are ambassadors to their fellows (about 4000 kids) in schools through their interactions and artistic performances that influence their character.

4 Out of the 5 schools, serve children from the most vulnerable highly populated communities in Dar es Salaam city (Temeke Municipality) where most incidents of violence against children take place. One school (with 80 club members) are primary students from medium income families in Kinondoni Municipality.

Because of the pandemic, schools were closed down from March to June this year, our programs paused too until July when schools started allowing clubs activities to proceed. We appreciate your financial support that helped us to recover and resume with club activities. Because of your support, volunteers were able to visit schools regularly.

As a result, post Covid19 Lockdown programs (July-November 2020), that enabled kids to start showing improvement in their character, the Education Coordinator at the ward level wrote a letter to Temeke Municipality advising the District Education Officer to extend our collaboration and scale up to more schools supporting the must vulnerable communities, especially to enhance teachers with positive parenting and positive disciplining skills. This is huge as Temeke Municipality has a record of incidents of corporal punishment at school that resulted into child disabilities and/or deaths.

More kids are aware of the forms of violence and they are confident and courageous to communicate them to their teachers, parents, caretakers and local government authorities –unlike before when it was normal for acts of violence against children to remain unreported. It was encouraging to see the collaboration amongst teachers, parents and local government authorities in addressing the cases of violence against children.

With the pilot program on the use of Virtues Project as a special model for character restoration for the children in conflict with laws who are in the juvenile rehabilitation centers, the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children has given us a permit to extend the time in modeling The Virtues Project in a Dar es Salaam based center and later on scaling up to other 4 centers in Tanzania.

We want to express our deepest gratitude for your continued financial and technical support that has enabled us to be resilient as a social impact organization. Because of your support, we have been able to continue and expand our work to promote a culture of safety and caring in schools and families.

Links:

Bright Jamaii Initiative

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Sep 14, 2020
Demand for The Virtues Project Growing

By Godwin Mongi | Project Leader

This pilot project began with a goal to train 5 schools in The Virtues Project (TVP) model, provide ongoing staff support as they implemented the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project, and then evaluate the effectiveness of this model as a replacement for the caning of children in schools. The demand for The Virtues Project in Tanzania has increased due to gross acts of violence against children as a way of disciplining them that has led to death, disability, high dropout rates, poor school performance, and more.

Evaluation of the first five schools revealed the following:

230 students impacted, now demonstrate higher moral standards (self-discipline) and improvement in academic performance
26 teachers and caretakers impacted, now utilizing positive discipline skills
Acts of corporal punishments have reduced drastically, approximately 70% reported in the pilot schools
Approximately 50% of the parents whose children are involved in the program are also starting to practice positive discipline at home, and share challenges and progress with teachers as they observe their children’s character development

The impact of this project and your giving on GlobalGiving:

Strengthened Bright Jamii Initiative (BJI), the organization that provides the training
Through BJI, brought TVP to 5 more schools in Dar es Salaam city, and for the first time, begin to include government schools
Trained six volunteers at the BJI to support TVP in schools
Trained 15 teachers and 7 support staff
Enrolled a total of 320 students in Bright Clubs where they learn and practice TVP strategies
Enabled BJI to join a small national task force with government ministries, UN agencies, and international organizations to develop the National Early Childhood Development Multi-Sectoral Plan which includes identifying and implementing programs that contribute to ending violence against children. TVP is now identified as one of those programs that can contribute to ending violence against children.

We intend to expand the project to five additional schools in the coming year. Mobilizing resources to expand The Virtues Project requires ongoing recruiting and orientation of new volunteers, materials development and production, transport support and allowance for volunteers, teachers training, audio/visual documentation of the impact, and BJI participation in relevant local and national forums for different stakeholders, including the government, to showcase results for advocacy and seek further support.

We thank you for your continued caring and financial support for our work. You are helping us to create safe and caring school communities for the children of Tanzania.

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May 18, 2020
Growth of The Virtues Project in Tanzania

By Godwin Mongi | Project Leader

BRIGHT JAMII INITIATIVE (BJI)

BJI is our non-governmental organization that operates across Tanzania working in grassroots communities with a keen focus on comprehensive child protection systems. BJI exerts all its efforts in child empowerment, influencing a child-friendly legal framework, and promoting positive social norms for the best interest of the child while employing human rights and interfaith approaches to attain its goal. BJI works closely with the Government and Religious Institutions in its interventions.

During this reporting period, we have established two Bright Clubs that learn about The Virtues Project. In January 2020, BJI established two Bright Clubs with a total of 84 pupils (34 boys and 50 girls) at Hope Primary School located in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Bright Clubs are voluntary clubs formed and managed by pupils, supervised by teachers with the capacity building by BJI, to support the promotion of safe schools and life skills through a child participation method. Since their establishment, children have had 12 sessions, and teachers have shared how much more confident, more disciplined, and are more helpful to one another children have become.

In February, a two-day teacher training, an Introduction to The Virtues Project, was provided for 12 teachers (5 male and 7 female) at Hope Primary School who became receptive after seeing the transformation in students. Training increased teacher capacity to understand the children more, new ways to communicate with them, increase in their ability to help students with challenges they face in order to have full participation in school. This has expanded to the parents' engagement as well in promoting the well-being of their children.

BJI has been engaged by the school to address a number of trauma cases that children go through as a result of the parents’ conflicts and fights, using the fifth strategy, offer companioning.

Additionally, in February BJI conducted a one-day training for Support Staff (5 male and 4 female) including secretaries, cooks, cleaners, drivers, etc. in order to create a virtues’ environment at the Hope Primary School. The support staff interacts with children quite often and they had been facing challenges on how to best communicate with them. After the training, they committed to using the language of virtues to make communication easier and they asked to be treated the same when they were in school.

COVID UPDATE:
In the current context of COVID_19, with school closed, BJI is developing and designing a virtues’ online content for a campaign that will target students and parents accompanied by online live talks inviting different speakers on positive parenting with The Virtues Project to join in giving the talks while BJI promotes the program for people to join and interact with the talk.

We thank you for your charitable donations. Your generosity helps fund our materials, technology, and training costs. Thank you for supporting our mission to make schools safer by creating cultures of caring through implementing the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project.

Links:

https://www.virtuesproject.com/Pdf/5VirtuesStrategies.pdf

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