We are happy to announce that in January 2019 we will start with a food program. Thanks to a new sponsor we can start a pilot for providing lunches for the students. Lunches are very important because of the nutritional value but also because we think it will decrease absenteeism at the schools. It is a trigger for students to come to school but also to stay at school until the afternoon.
Some students walk for hours to come to school. Lunches are currently rare at most of the Kamitei sponsored schools. During harvest season there are sometimes lunches. However when the harvest is poor or there is trouble in the community lunches are not provided on a daily basis. We as Kamitei would like to see that students get food on a regular base especially because breakfast at home is not guaranteed.
To organise lunches for all our students is a big challenge. Not only because of money (one US dollar for each student per day) but also because we need to organise it in a way that we are certain food will end at the plates of the students and not somewhere else. As the first phase of the pilot we will start at the schools of the Kilimatembo community.
We already have built a kitchen at Marar and the kitchens at Gilala and Kilimatembo are for the time being sufficient. At the moment we are discussing with all involved how to realize everything. We will keep you updated on progress and look forward to seeing the data support the impact of the new initiative!
In the last weekend of November we had a full day of exams to select the new crop of Eagle Scholarship students and we awarded five new scholarships. This time we saw a truly remarkable performance of the Oltukai community, winning 3 out of 5 scholarships! We also had a chance to catch up with the community leaders and the team in Tanzania.
One of our Eagle students, Winnie, graduated last September. As an Eagle Scholarship student she started at Kilimanjaro English Medium primary school in Arusha. There she ranked quite a few times as best of her class and then she went to Joyland Secondary school. She got a place at this famous public school because her results at the end of primary school showed that she was one of the best students in Tanzania! Also at Joyland she belonged to the best of her class and was even head girl which means something as president among students. Her parents and Jane joined her on this special day!
Our field officer Bill had a meeting with education officers of the District and the Province. They told Bill that they observe a big difference in their region between Kamitei supported schools and non-Kamitei supported schools. They were impressed by the way students, even in the absence of teachers, discuss and interact with each other. The officers asked Bill to thank all the donors and people who are working for Kamitei.
On Thursday February 1, 2018, we held our annual event in Amsterdam at the HQ of Newzoo, with an update from Jeroen and Ageeth on progress made in 2017 and plans for 2018, as well as some very tasty food prepare by Grace. The day before, on Wednesday January 30, we had our annual event in Belgium, hosted by long term supporter Hugo Levecke.
In December we welcomed an important new sponsor: Globewise, a Dutch NGO with a focus on education. For the coming three years they will support Kamitei. The decision was made after a visit to our schools in Tanzania and a number of meetings with the Kamitei volunteers by Marinel van Zanten en Rosalien van der Laan. This visit was also a good opportunity to go through the latest exam data we collect every year from all schools, allowing us to monitor progress on a subject-by-subject basis for each class level.
