STUDENTS CAPACITY BUILDING AND EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT, MWANZA (TANZANIA).
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1.0 Introduction
In recent years, governmental and non-governmental organizations in Tanzania have faced a high number of students who fail on the different levels of education, especially in the government schools and high schools. Due to all that facts, the government, together with the different stakeholders on education, professors from the different universities, member of the parliament, the cabinet, and teachers, introduces the “BIG RESULTS NOW” program. The initiative is comprising of the research that came out with the recommendation that the parents and the teachers are the main parts to the cause of the students’ mass failure. The parents have become the root cause of this students’ mass failure and that is all because there is no clear classification of the students’ behaviors.
In 2007, more than 5,000 of the country’s students failed on the national examination which become a yearly routine in the students’ performance. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000. They set measurable and time-bound goals, which range from combating poverty, improve universal primary education, promoting gender equity, and empowering women. To meet the goal of MDGs, there has been an increasing expectation on the impact of education programs on the different societies within Tanzania from the government, private sectors, and charity organizations.
Then, we would like to raise a question, “Why most students are failing on their examination?” This is because the formal relationship between the parents and students, students and teachers, parents and teachers, or the community and the teachers tend to become divided on ensuring to raise the students’ educational performance. One of the reasons might be because parents become more thinking about their responsibility and business more than their children (mostly their behavior and their educational performance). In addition, the community where the students fail is sometimes the main cause for the failure since there is no provision of information to the students’ behavior. Hence, it leads to the high number of students walking on the streets during the class time.
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1.1 Project Overview
When United Nations declared 2000 as the year of Millennium goals, it became clear to the rest of the world that the model of education must be clearly related to all participants (parents, students, and the teachers) which is essential in eradicating poverty at the grassroots level. “Education can be provided by filling all the gaps between the teachers and the parents, students and the parents to improve their living conditions, but who are unable to find education through the channels of mainstream educational strategies”. Hon. J.M Kiewit.
The premise of this education program is only to take a look at the future of the nation in comparing to the future world education status. Every individual has an enterprising capacity – a spirit within them that strives to improve their lives. But more often than not, the surroundings, such as the systematic unavailability of getting an education from schools or the exorbitant cost of acquiring such education, dampen that human capacity. What the world must not forget is that poverty-stricken communities and individuals are also productive and enterprising and given the right educational tool, they are capable of improving themselves and their families and even their offsprings.
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2.0 Tanzania Economy
Based on a statistics provided by Forbes, Tanzania is one of the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita income. Tanzania has an average of 7% GDP growth per year between 2000 and 2008 on strong gold production and tourism. The economy depends heavily on agriculture, which accounts for more than 40% of GDP, provides 85% of exports, and employs about 80% of the workforce.
It has been added that the World Bank, the IMF, and bilateral donors have provided funds to rehabilitate Tanzania’s aging economic infrastructure, including rail and port infrastructure that are important trade links for inland countries. Recent banking reforms have helped increase private-sector growth and investment in education, and the government has increased spending on agriculture to 7% of its budget. Continued donor assistance and solid education policies supported a positive growth rate, despite the world recession. In 2008, Tanzania received the world’s largest Millennium Challenge Compact grant, worth $698 million. Dar es Salaam used fiscal stimulus and loosened monetary policy to ease the impact of the global recession. GDP growth in 2009-10 was a respectable 6% per year due to high gold prices and increased production.
Inequality between urban and rural areas is one of the important features of poverty in Tanzania. This inequality is due to the uneven division of natural resources. Poor natural resource endowments and poor access to natural resources are one of the most important causes of poverty. It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of poor people in Tanzania are living in rural areas, such as Sengerema, Ilemela, Nyamagana, and Misungwi all found in Mwanza. It is also said that Tanzania’s richest states have incomes that are five times higher than those of the poorest states. The reason that poverty concentrates on the rural area is that rural Tanzanian primarily depend on agriculture income, which is highly dependent on the natural condition such as precipitation amount. Inadequate rain and improper irrigation facilities can obviously cause low and sometimes no production of crops. To cope with this, it is better to diversify the risks. It will be essential for Tanzania to facilitate non-farm entrepreneurship to get the rural economy moving. Encouraging policies that promote competition in agricultural marketing will also ensure that farmers receive better prices. On the contrary, poverty prevails in urban area also. Increase in the populations is the main reason for urban poverty. This is due to migration of the rural families from villages to cities. This migration is mainly caused by poor employment opportunities in villages. This situation has exacerbated the fact that there are few job opportunities in urban areas, too.
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3.0 Implementing Organization
The students’ capacity Building and Education Improvement Project of the schools in Dodoma Municipality will be implemented by Sunsocer Community Development Foundation is a non-profit making organization registered with the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children of The United Republic of Tanzania.
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3.1 Project Location & Target Group
The Students Capacity Building and Education Improvement Project is located in Mwanza Region of Tanzania. Mwanza City is located on the southern shores of Lake Victoria in Northwest Tanzania. It covers an area of 1325 Km2 of which 425 is dry land and 900 Km2 is covered by water. Of the 425 km2 dry land area, approximately 86.8 km2 is urbanized while the remaining areas consist of forested land, valleys, cultivated plains, grassy and undulating rocky hill areas. The Project covers the counties of 5 Wards. The project is to involve 10 poor rural schools from the sixteen wards of Mwanza Region but based on the Ilemela with five wards first.
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3.2 Organization’s Location Address
Headquarters are located in Maryland, Washington DC. Founded at Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania at Mwanza Town, Kiloleli Transformer Street. It operates in Mwanza Region. The Postal Address is P.O. Box 6409, Ilemela Mwanza, Tanzania. Our e-mail address is rose@sunsocercdfoundation.org.
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3.3 Mission & Vision
Our Mission
Our goal is to build empowered communities, provide effective means, and help individuals to have an opportunity for a better life. We do this by strengthening the capacity of the community to be good in production, represent their stakeholders, network with others for learning and knowledge sharing, and advocate for social, economic, and environmental justice.Our Vision and Values
We envision to build lives, reach potentials, and live lightly that others may see the light. Relationships based on trust and respect, interdependence, responsible stewardship, the inclusion of vulnerable groups, and respect for local ownership and knowledge are the core values across all of our programs. -
4.0 Goal/Aim
To empower and build the capacity of the schools’ ability to let out the BIG RESULT NOW to become functioning on the education and reduce the mass failure.
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5.0 Organization Review of SCDF
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5.1 General Information
The SCDF program is implemented by a team of trained Field Officers and Trainers who love their work and their clients to help them develop their objectives. The trainers and field officers facilitate the different organizational program including vetting, selecting, and training the needy; social training, approving schools plans, monitoring, and supervising each school with their program; and, tracking activities and reporting to head office.
The Students Capacity Building and Education Improvement Program is based on the assumption that these young people’s future depends on how we as parents made for them. With the SCDF involvement, they can make this potential a reality. The SCDF Education Improvement Program also emphasizes strengthening skills to learn about the abilities, skills, and behaviors of the children so that they are better equipped to sustain and expand their performance.
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5.2 What We Have: Our Present Strengths
- We have three (3) Trainers or Field Officers who carry out training in group formation, group management & group dynamics, savings and business management skills, and pre-loan disbursement education. The education improvement program is headed by the Director and assisted by the Program Coordinator.
- We have a network of close to 5 client schools and beneficiaries who are part of our outreach with 2 beneficiary groups and need training and later extension in the first quarter of the New Year.
- We have a geographical outreach/coverage of Mwanza Region.
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5.3 Needs
Present problems and challenges
- Inadequate funds to enable us train more needy schools in students’ management skills, record/bookkeeping skills, savings culture, group management & group dynamics, and functional & peer skills.
- Inadequate funds to acquire enough training materials and equipment: stationery for training, hire of training venues, refreshments for participants, and production of workbooks for each beneficiary during the training.
- Inadequate funds for logistics, including transport and communication.
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5.4 Description of Market Survey
We have been conducting a survey regarding the needs of the project, in which we used a questioner in which we targeted families of small business holder/stall holders/local stallholders. The first survey was conducted in 2013 in Ilemela District and the second one was in 2014 June to September in Sengerema and Nyamagana District. The survey area covers 5 rural villages in these districts. Survey reveals a big need of connective relationship for a better education project in both districts where more than 50% population passing their life below the poverty line and very careless regarding their health and children education.
In rural village economy, such as the surveyed area, fishing and small businesses are the major income source of peoples within the Mwanza and Lake Zone area in general. On average, people get employment in the fishing sector for 250 days a year. Rural poverty is concentrated among landless agriculture workers and small fishers, who constitute 46% of the rural workforce. They are suffering from the vulnerability of income variation which influences the parent to get more attention on the process of finding the daily meal more than to think on the other side of children like the availability of the parent on school meetings. It is also said that women-headed households in rural areas are worst affected by poverty.
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6.1 Project Self-sustainability
Savings and grants from the headquarter, such as compulsory and voluntary savings of 15% amount required for this project from the clients will also be with consideration of the idea that no individual earns the interest. Careful values portfolio management and officers’ behaviors tracking will be applied to enhance portfolio quality. Already 5 staff has been trained in aids tracking and social care best practices. The program hopes to build a solid and growing fund base with clear programme plans, backed by operational capacities that lead to mobilization of commercial funds from depositors and the financial system and eventually to full independence from donor support by the end of the year 2015 by generating its own income and enough to sustain. Our connective relationship for better education project/program will be hoping to build a solid and growing education base with clear involvement of the all participant during the implementation of this project.
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7.1 Our Future Plans
- To expand our Revolving Program to target all the client schools we train and to have continuous follow up. With more financial and logistical support, we hope to increase the number of schools to be covered by this program and to access more rural areas to reach more schools.
- To expand our capacity building/training program to gain more capacity by recruiting more field/ training staff. Also to acquire more equipment for training, such as video, camera, digital camera, overhead slide project, etc.
- To expand to neighboring districts of Sengerema, Ilemela, Nyamagana, Misungwi, and Ilemela District.
CAPITAL BUDGET:
The capital budget is the initial funds to help us cover incurred expenses for the following tasks as indicated below.
- Recruitment and training of new key staff (volunteers staffs).
- Administrative (preparations of new documents, e.g. job descriptions and contracts for both the board and key staff, receipt books, head papers, setting up a new operating accounting system, model of reporting, etc.)
- Research and transportation to meet prospective schools
- Collecting visual data and including setting up social media for effective communication
- One week training and take away manuals
- Planning and budgeting for the SUNSOCER PROJECTS
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