Greetings and jambo! Thanks for keeping in touch and hope you enjoy this update. We have helped over 3,500 kids to date! I am very excited to return to Tanzania and work with our new partners, the Arusha Girls High School and more schools in the Arumeru district.
Our goal is "Helping 20,000 kids in 2020," and we are working very hard to reach our target. An estimated 5.1 million children ages 7 - 17 do not attend school in Tanzania (Human Rights Watch) and we are making a difference improving school environments so that more children have access to a safe learning environment (visit our annual reports).
The Arusha Girls High School (pictured left) are in need of twelve new toilets, security lighting for their dormitories, dining tables, and a library, which KiliTech is supporting as part of our 2019/2020 initiative. The cultural attitude towards women in Tanzania is very difficult as fewer than 1/3 of the girls who enter secondary school (the equivalent to our high school) will graduate. According to UNICEF 1 in 10 girls in secondary school experience sexual assault by a teacher. The Arusha Girls High School has about three hundred students, and fifteen teachers and they are happy to see KiliTech working there.
Most schools in Tanzania were built by local communities with limited access to building supplies. With the new government, supplies are able to reach more rural areas, however, the old pit latrines (pictured below) pose great risk and are known to collapse even with students inside. KiliTech continues to focus on rebuilding school toilet facilities, installing running water, hand-washing stations, and water towers at schools. The local pit latrines are extremely dangerous and pose numerous health hazards including cholera, hepatitis, and other water and sanitation related diseases.
Until schools and homes have running water women will carry 5-gallon buckets filled with water daily over long distances. Many schools have over one-thousand students sharing water for toilets, eating, and hand washing. Gray water is then reused to water crops the local gardens.
New toilets built by KiliTech at Seliani school (2018 - 2019) include running water and hand-washing. We are working with at least five more schools in the upcoming year to implement more modern facilities. Flushing toilets are part of a nationwide effort by the government to improve schools in Tanzania, but as you can imagine installing running water and flushing toilets at every school in Tanzania will take many decades. We are working with the local district commissioners and ministry of education to assist where we can make the most impact.
KiliTech continues to support Tanzania Women Guide Foundation providing education to women at Mweka college With the next graduating class, KiliTech has sixteen women guides (out of the hundreds of male guides) responsible for taking clients to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet). Africa's tallest mountain and the world's tallest free standing mountain. The girls face numerous challenges with discrimination, bullying, and harassment.
Glory Thobias, founder of Tanzania Women Guide Foundation, was one of the guides taking me and Tony to the top of Kili on our climb in 2015! In 2019 Glory won Tanzania's Best Mountain Guide of the year, two years in a row. What she is doing to promote women guides in Tanzania is recognized in Tanzania for changing the perception of women working at home. The ten women here are the first graduates of TWGF.
KiliTech loves to provide school desks to rural schools so that all students can have a better learning environment.
We could not do any of these things without your support! Thank you for your love, faith, and friendship.
