Post-Secondary Education for Students in Tanzania

Dear Project Wezesha Supporters,

Now in our 16th year, we are delighted to continue our work with students, teachers, and schools in Western Tanzania. Since we launched in 2009, we have built a secondary school, implemented many academic study camps, and provided funding to students to attend secondary, vocational, and high schools, professional certificate and diploma programs, and university! Our graduates include teachers, nursers, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, and medical professionals. Below we share about our soon-to-be first surgeon, Hamisi and Mary, who just began her first job in a pharmacy!

HAMISI - A Surgeon in the Making

We’re so proud of Hamisi who is entering his 5^th year of medical school to become surgeon. He recently began a rotation at Muhimbili National Hospital a Research Center and University teaching Hospital in Dar es Salaam. Muhimbili has a 1,500 bed capacity and attends to 2,000 outpatients per day. This is just another amazing experience for Hamisi as he rounds the bend into his career as a surgeon.

During this rotation, Hamisi spent time working with patients who are grappling with mental health challenges. He then gave a presentation to an audience of doctors and medical students to provide an update on what the hospital is seeing with regard to mental health issues. (See photos.)

MARY - Applying Knowledge from Pharmaceutical Sciences

Mary, a Project Wezesha student who recently graduated with a diploma in Pharmaceutical Science just to a job working at a Pharmacy in Kahama, located in Northern Tanzania just below Lake Victoria. She is thrilled to be earning her own salary and contributing to support her family. (See photo of her at work.)

AMAHORO SECONDARY SCHOOL 

Lucas recently visited Amahoro Secondary School at the request of the headmaster. (See photos of Lucas and the students at Amahoro.) The news to celebrate is that Amahoro Secondary School continues to be one of the top performing schools in the region. Because of the investments we were able to make with the support of our donors – computers, printers, solar panels, women’s changing stations, latrines – students at Amahoro are motivated; teachers are motivated; and exam scores are high.

The downside of being a high performing school is that many students want to attend and the Ministry of Education has increased the number of students that can join each class. Unfortunately, some of the updates from Lucas included requests from the headmaster to meet the demands of increased enrollment. At the moment, we’re still trying to raise funds to pay our current students' tuition, but we are committed to supporting Amahoro Secondary School teachers, administrators, and students. At this point, they’re hoping to build new teachers’ houses, but an immediate attainable goal for us would be to help them buy new tables and chairs. Currently students are sitting three to a table with two chairs

In addition, our Study Camps have long made a significant contribution toward increasing student outcomes (e.g., high performances on national exams, improved English language proficiency, and increased confidence among learners who attend). We had sustained funding for Study Camps for five years, but it has ended. The school saw the impact and wants to continue hosting and enrolling students from Amahoro. We hope to continue with a camp in the coming December. But if we get a generous donation of $2500, we can run one this June! Would you like to be the sponsor of the next Study Camp! Maybe friends, family, a school or neighborhood would like to sponsor a camp. Let us know.

RETURN TO TANZANIA

Co-founder, Rai Farrelly will be returning to Tanzania in June. She, Lucas, and Madaga are presenting at the Africa English Language Teacher Association (ELTA) annual conference, which is being held in Dar es Salaam. The focus of the session will be the impact of the study camp with guidance and encouragement for others to implement similar camps in other remote regions throughout Tanzania, and other African nations. We’re very excited to present and share with others! After the conference, Rai, Lucas and Madaga will fly to Kigoma, along with two of Rai’s TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) colleagues – Elisabeth Chan and Kisha Bryant. We’re all so excited and can’t wait to share news and updates with you soon.  

Thank you for your continued support of our work!

Please share our successes with your friends and family! We’d love to grow our network of supporters. You can follow us here on Facebook and Instagram

With gratitude, 

The Project Wezesha Team
Rai, Lucas, and Madaga