Our relationship with the small villages around Moshi, a town tucked in the foothills of Tanzania’s towering Mount Kilimanjaro, spans over a decade. In many village schools in rural Tanzania, student-teacher ratios regularly reach fifty-to-one; coupled with extremely limited educational resources like textbooks and writing utensils, the faculty at these schools do their best to provide quality instruction to their students using what they have on hand. This often means outdated or falling-apart books and one or two resources shared among a classroom full of students.
Through our local partners, we have maintained long-term relationships with over half a dozen village schools, and our impact through the years has been felt by students, faculty…and travelers alike! Through lesson planning, getting creative with educational materials, classroom and campus refurbishment projects, the impact our groups have had is apparent in many aspects of school life.
Impactful Projects
One story of change that we find particularly inspiring is a recent donation made to a school in Rau, an underserved area village. Last year, Discover Corps travelers donated the resources required to provide electricity to one of their primary school classrooms.
While this may sound like a small gesture, the ability to light a classroom has made a huge difference for visual clarity within the learning space. Students can now see the chalkboard on dark and cloudy days, something that was previously not possible, especially in the rainy season.
When some of our Travel Specialists were last there, the teachers forgot to switch the lights on because they were so accustomed to being in the dark. Now, their students remind them to switch it on and let the light in!
Check out our DC traveler demonstrating the ease of the light switch and what a difference it makes below:
In October, another group of travelers was able to fundraise to donate a photocopier to this rural school, effectively broadening the possibilities for learning beyond their previous bounds! Educational materials such as worksheets, stories, maps–anything that the teachers could dream up can now make its way into the hands of eager students.
