SHE HAD THE PERSISTENCE.... WE GAVE HER THE CHANCE

The best moment of this week was the news from Mama Grace that M's (a sponsored student who recently graduated from Form 4) mother called saying that MUCCoBs (Moshi University College of Co-operative and Business Studies) had just accepted her into their Accountancy Certificate Program.
Here's M's path:

• Three years ago, while I was visiting the private secondary school that had taken our very first teenagers who no longer qualified for government secondary education, the head mistress asked EdPowerment to sponsor a day student .  She slipped me a long letter from Magdalene.  Part of it read, "I have decided to write this letter in order that I can have some help from You.  First I live very far from school.  I have to take two buses when I go to school as well as when I go back home.  A part from that I take a long time to arrive at the bus terminal where I walk one and half km.  Besides my family is very poor house covered by the old boxes. .. My mother hasn't a job, she sells vegetable on the street... she can't affort the price of fees or transport... during the night I use lamp to read and my mother complain very much because she can't affort also to buy some kerosene..."
• So we agreed to sponsor Magdalene.  She did reasonably well but by the end of 2011, Notre Dame decided that her grades were not high enough.  Notre Dame was trying to build its academic reputation, and so they dismissed M with only one more year to finish secondary school.
• We contacted another school in a more remote area and they agreed to take M even though she had only one year left - the alternative for M would have been the street.
• This past November, M graduated from secondary school and actually PASSED the Form 4 National Exam failed by 60% of Tanzanian graduates.  Because she passed, she was able to apply for certificate and vocational programs.
• Having learned some computer skills, she downloaded applications to programs that interested her at an internet cafe. She went all over getting the required documents - these included a new type of birth certificate from the hospital where she was born.  We supported her all the way, giving her money for bus rides and even sodas on her trips. 

AND THIS WEEK MAGDALENE LEARNED THAT SHE WILL NOW BE ABLE TO CONTINUE POST- SECONDARY EDUCATION IN A VERY PRACTICAL AND PROMISING COURSE OF STUDY.

Magdelene (right) with Teresia, another Form 4 graduate now attending higher education.