Education Outreach
EDUCATION OUTREACH has been vast, and our accomplishments have changed the lives of over 4000 kids and hundreds of villagers. The first phase of our program, Tools for Schools, delivered more than 2000 pounds of school supplies to 4000 kids in Tanzania.
With our ongoing sister school efforts, 3 Seattle elementary schools are financially supporting 3 sister schools in the Usambara Mountain area, near Lushoto.
The first exchange was photographs. Next we had the kids write questions. They were so excited that their piece of paper went all the way to the other side of their world, down to the Southern Hemisphere, and into the hands of a fellow pupil.
In the classrooms, we study all these geographic facts, and the kids’ learning experiences are totally relevant. We hired a local person in Africa to translate the questions from English to Swahili and back again.
Most of the questions were very basic like: What do you do in school? Is it hot there? Do you have a mom and dad?
Some of the questions and answers were very creative and revealing: An American asked “Where is Tanzania,” and the answer was a drawing of the world! “What do you MOST like to do?” Answer, “Go to school.” How do you get to school? “Walk”.
Several kids in Tanzania asked questions from America: “Do you live peaceful there?” “What do you cultivate there?” “What does your environment look like?”
One year the American kids received musical instruments from Tanzania, a Masai native blanket for the boys and a traditional kanga wrap for the girls, and each child received a piece of cinnamon bark and some black pepper corns.
The goal is always to enable the American kids to feel directly involved, and never to miss a learning opportunity.
During this phase while we were discussing how you reach Tanzania, a 10 year old boy asked: “why can’t you just drive across America, swim to Africa, and then hike to Tanzania?”
This question provided a wonderful opportunity to teach about flight patterns, distances, national borders on the African continent, globalization and many additional facts about reality.
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