Wonderful News From Tanzania!

Aug 28, 2021 | Students, General

Hello everyone, it has been a little while since you’ve heard from us, since everyone has been busy trying to catch up from the last year of no work and lots of worry. We have loads of news for you, so you’ll be hearing from us more consistently for a while, but we wanted to start with the news of our students in Tanzania.

As we mentioned earlier this year, all three girls passed their Form 4 exams, albeit at different levels. This is great news, since at least half of secondary school students don’t pass at all, and that greatly limits their opportunities in the future. Well, all our girls (young women, really) passed, so we’re very excited and grateful for that!

Winnie will be going into Form 5 in a school in Arusha. She wants to study on the track for a law program. We think Winnine would be an excellent lawyer; she’s smart, doesn’t take any grief from people, and knows how to hold her own!

Greg and Shannon are hoping that Jeni Joseph will be able to enter a teaching school, to learn to be a primary school teacher. They are hoping to get her into a Montessori training program as well, since we all feel that the methods used in that program would be perfect for her. Tanzanian schools are pretty tough on children. There is a lot of rote memorization and repetition; questions are not allowed; corporal punishment is common, and any personal attention is non-existent. Jeni suffered from this style of teaching, and we are hoping that if she can get into the Montessori training program, this will  offer a different way of looking at students and education. We think she’ll thrive there and be an excellent teacher one day.

Jeni Anselm has the most exciting news of all. She graduated at the top of her class and did so well on her Form 4 exam that she was offered the opportunity to go straight to university! This is quite rare, and at first Greg and Shannon were not certain she should do it, since she will be so young. But Jeni explained her reasoning for wanting to follow this course: she wants to study engineering, but the Form 5 and 6 curriculum in physics is very poor quality. Many students have been graduating from Form 6 and not getting into university because of the poor quality of their education. There is simply no national standard for her field of study. So she will be going to the univerisity in Mbeya, near the border with Zambia, and she starts in October.

And finally, although she is not being supported by our program anymore, we wanted to let you know about Husna. She has one year left in her nursing program in Tanga. She is doing incredibly well, and she will continue on for an advanced degree in nursing after she finishes.

We are so proud of all these young women! It is so wonderful to hear of their successes, and to think of them moving forward in such a big way. Jeni J. and Jeni A. will likely apply for post-secondary funding from us, so we will no doubt have several more years of bringing you terrific news from Tanzania!

Jeni Anselm in 2012, when she joined the foundation.

Jeni Anselm opening gifts from Christa in June

Jeni Joseph almost 10 years ago, when she joined the foundation.

Jeni Joseph opening gifts from Christa in June

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll keep you up to date on the happenings in Tanzania as we learn more. Stay tuned for more news from Mexico, Nicaragua, Nepal, Honduras, and elsewhere!

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