A day after the event in Amsterdam, Jeroen, Jane and Ageeth travelled to Belgium at the invitation of Hugo Levecke, who had organised an event at the Royal Hockeyclub in Leuven, where over 20 guests attended. Kamitei is now also an officially recognised charity in Belgium for tax purposes, also thanks to the help of PWC, and the evening was a great success.
The annual sponsor event in Amsterdam was held in January and we were happy to see so many old and new friend who support Kamitei. This year it was held at the private bar of Intertrust, who kindly allowed us to use their facilities (incl. free drinks). Jeroen and Ageeth presented updates on our activities, and there was a lot of good interaction. And, not the least important, Jane and Grace had prepared a very a nice buffet dinner, which was much appreciated.
Almost done… New teacher house in Marar will help the Marar primary school a lot! Housing and transport of teachers was a major bottleneck and this will alleviate it massively.
Sometimes people wonder why we would invest in a teacher home, what does that have to do with education of children? The simple truth is that the quality of the education of the children depends to a very large extent on the quality of the teaching, and absenteeism of teachers is a real problem in many remote villages. If there is no reasonable housing available near the school, teachers will need to live somewhere else and only the travel itself can already be very challenging. In our view it is therefore essential to have decent teacher houses as part of the overall education improvement program.
Thanks donors for your support!
In a recent article the Economist argued that teaching teachers to be more effective in their job is the most effective way overall to improve educational results. That applies everywhere, both in developing and developed countries. We as Kamitei concluded the same a couple of years ago. We focus most of our efforts in the 8 primary schools that we support on improving the skills and motivation of its 70 teachers. For the full article see the economist website: ‘education reform: teaching the teachers’.
Eagle Scholarship student Winnie Leonce ended #1 of the entire school in mid-year, continuing her top ranking from last year. Winnie joined our Eagle Scholarship program in 2011 and has been doing very well throughout. Originally from Kilimatembo, her father is a science and geography teacher at Kilimatembo primary school. Her mother is a farmer. She has two brothers and two sisters, whom are all younger. Her parents are extremely proud of her performance and so are we!
Our “alumni” community scholarship students Leiylo and Kimolo, who both entered the community scholarship program in July 2015, ended up at the top of their class and they were awarded an internship from Tanzania National Parks – an excellent result and very exciting news for them!
These two students with Maasai roots and a deep understanding of their natural environment, excelled at their course and even offered additional “peer courses” to their fellow students, based on all the real life experience and generation old knowledge they benefitted from.
Both students may now qualify for further education, such as a diploma course.