BOYS… AMBITION… AND GENDER EQUALITY IN TANZANIA

EdPowerment is all about girls’ rights to education and employment.  However, the reality is that acceptance of young women as equal citizens requires the education – and re-education – of young men. Women and men must move forward in society together.

EdPowerment sponsors girls and boys to a local vocational school.

Today in the Kilimanjaro area where EdPowerment operates, Secondary School options for girls can outnumber the options for boys. (High School options for both are lacking)  This situation is disastrous for a progressive society.  And this is why EdPowerment supports boys struggling to become productive men, as well as girls struggling to determine their own futures. 

Male and female teenagers join together in our life-skills workshops

Boys need to be motivated to succeed as human beings, as income-producers and as models for their children.  In agricultural areas, too many follow the paths of their fathers, resorting to local brew and truancy to fill days absent of ambition.  EdPowerment deplores this situation. Where we sense ambition and capability in a young man who has been relegated to the sidelines when he should be in the game, we offer a path of learning.  We work with him, guide him… and re-educate him about what is possible in life. 

Today, Tom, Ally, Florian, and Deus lead our sponsored boys while Innocent, Jackson and Deo lead our Kilimahewa students.  One day in the not too distant future, all of them will demonstrate a better way to be a man, worker, community leader and father.

No longer at home.  Ally will one day serve his community as a health provider.

Donations to EdPowerment are a direct way to enable the education and employment of a young man or woman.  Email us to ask for any further information or clarification or to direct a donation toward your specific interest.

GREAT NEWS FOR EDPOWERMENT AND THE KILIMAHEWA EDUCATIONAL CENTRE

This fall Rotary International awarded the Rotary Club of Moshi a $53,000 Global Grant to develop a skills program under EdPowerment’s supervision at the Kilimahewa Educational Centre.   Today, the program’s first stages are underway! Under the guidance of EdPowerment Director, Kerri Elliott, a pairing of Internet and farming best practice instruction in going to change lives in the villages of Kilimahewa.

Kerri joins community representatives attending the Rotary Club of Moshi meeting

What does the Global/Local Skills Program entail? 

The Kiimahewa Centre’s talented staff will continue to teach a core of academic subjects to local teens shut out of government schools. But now, Internet access, powered by an upgraded and solar powered electrical grid, will allow so much more.  Students can attend intensive English and math fundamentals classes – and then tap free learning sites after learning how to use, communicate and seek opportunities on the web. 

Village adults can join their children in the learning process through special adult education classes.  The world beyond Kilimahewa will be within their reach.  These “peasants” can begin to overcome the isolation that takes away their ambition and robs them of a belief that they can improve the lives of their children.

There’s more…  

The Global Grant is just not about bringing in the outside world.  It also expands Kilimahewa’s existing chicken project in order to teach skills that will help area farmers build real, sustainable businesses. Today, too many local mamas fend for their families by tending to a few “local” chickens and carrying meager baskets of vegetables to sell at corners.  Teens will learn how to move beyond this existence by raising healthy chickens and crops, monitoring costs, seeking markets and sustaining production.

The Global/Local Skills project is ambitious.  It is an innovative, practical way to serve this population – and it includes the community in its planning.  Every month a community group made up of parents, teachers, and village leaders meets to discuss the programs, their progress and the best way to move forward and reach their own society.

EdPowerment Country Director and Kilimahewa Coordinator, Grace Lyimo, and community representatives share thoughts at the Rotary Club Meeting

The ability to attend quality courses locally is invaluable to villagers with only their feet for transport.  As teens and adults join classes and use an Internet facility within walking distance of their soil and cement homes, the Centre strives to become more independently sustainable. 

EdPowerment is excited to share this news!  We are energized to guide this transition as we continue to fund the staff and operational costs of an educational haven for those the world has left behind.