Over the last few years individuals, departments, homerooms, and organisations associated with MIS, have been giving money to pay school fees for students in Tanzania.
The students are on a variety of courses, including primary and secondary schooling, accountancy, occupational therapy, teaching, nursing, law and tourism. In 2011, between us, we are paying for all of the education, including school fees, lunches, books and uniforms, for fifty students. We are now seeing young people enter university, qualify from vocational courses, obtain jobs and support their extended families. Each year, on the MIS student trip, we meet with many of these young people and hear how they are doing, and each year more students come asking for help.
In 2010 an MIS family set up a foundation in honour of a relative who had died. This is to support Tanzanian students through medical school. The first student, a young girl, has been selected, and is already studying in medical school.
We work through Tanzanian contacts to help us understand the needs and the culture, and ensure fees are paid to the various institutions. Fees range from 100 euros, which will pay for students to attend local secondary government schools, 500 to 1,000 euros that will pay for boarding placements, and occasionally more when individuals offer to support students through university placements. Whilst we have some long-term commitments, we are more often being asked to help students complete a course, perhaps for one or two years, when local funds become unavailable. This can happen when parents die, often from HIV aids. This is an area where we feel, without long-term commitment, MIS can make a major difference to these children’s lives.
We have provided education and boarding placement for some students because of impossible home situations. In 2007 we were introduced to Sarah a 17-year-old girl whose parents had died of HIV aids. She looked gaunt and extremely lost. In 2008 she arrived with a friend. We had been told Gladys had been subjected at home ‘to psychological torture’. The change in Sarah was astounding. Gladys was delightful. They were beautiful and confident, bright and doing well in school. It cost just five hundred euros for each of these girls to be safe and educated. Sarah in 2010 began an IT course in college and Gladys is waiting on 'O' level results hoping to begin her 'A' levels.
In 2008 in Kiserian village we were asked to help a young man Sam. His Mother was widowed. He needed a year of teacher training, which cost 700 euros. Sam is now teaching and helping support his family.
Each year when we visit Tanzania, the students we sponsor are invited to lunch. The MIS students entertain, take photographs and talk to the Tanzanian students in order to complete questionnaires as a method of giving feedback to their sponsors. This can be challenging, given that most of the students speak very limited English despite the fact that all secondary education in Tanzania is in English.
The sponsored student venture is an area of the Tanzanian Project at MIS that began from an initial request for help in 2002 and has grown and developed ever since. In Tanzania primary education is government funded while government secondary schools are still extremely limited. The majority of schools are poorly resourced. MIS has now contributed to the education and lives of over one hundred students.