Elimu Exchange

Project Learning/Community Center

This project was initiated by students at the Sokoine Primamry School, Kigoma, Tanzania. Sokoine Primary School is located in Msimba, a small village in the Kigoma Region.  There is no running water and neither electrical nor solar power.

The students identified computers/laptops as their most pressing need because they said they wanted to get information, communicate and exchange ideas with other students around the country as well as the world. 

UPDATE

• Jayesh Lakhani and friends from London, England, have donated smartboards, desktops, projectors, speakers, cabes, tables and chairs enough to fill a container which will be soon shipped to Tanzania.
• The Community Center at Sokoine Primary School is now up and running and has a lab for herbal medicine, harvested from the school forest planted by the children.

 NEEDS

       Monetary donations -

• to hire local carpenters to build shelves.
• to buy books and stationery.
• to hire a IT consultant to provide professional development to teachers at the school.

           

Project Beehive

 The students at Sokoine Primary School, as part of their Roots & Shoots       (www.rootsandshoots.org )  service learning project, have been working on regenarating land around their school. They nurtured seedlings and planted them. This is now a healthy ecosystem with diverse species of trees, plants, flowers, insects, animals and birds.  With the help of the parents, the beehives are maintained in the forest to harvest the honey.  

UPDATE

• Elimu Exchange donated five beehives.

• The beehives are now in the forest.

NEEDS

       Monetery donations - 

• to buy more beehives. 
• to buy fencing materials to protect beehives from predators.
• to buy tools and equipment to harvest the honey and prepare it for the retail market.

Project Chicken and Egg

 Dormitira Group consists of about 12 women who have formed a cooperative to share work, resources and help each other during times of need.  They range in age from approximately 15 to 50 and most of them are single women.

At the time of the initial meeting they spoke about a small piece of land that they had leased from a landowner to plant vegetables.  They sold the produce in the market and shared the profits.  However, the landowner was in the process of increasing the price of the land and according to their projections they would soon become economically unsustainable.  Their idea was to branch out into poultry in order to sell eggs. 

 

UPDATE

• In partnership with The Jane Goodall Institute, Elimu Exchange donated $1650 to the Dormitira Group.
• Dormitira Group has paid back 5% as per agreement in August, 2015. 
• The coop is up and running.

NEEDS

       Monetary donations

• to support more women enterpreneurs to start sustainable businesses.

Students gathered outside a classroom at the Sokoine Primary School 



Students with the laptops

Traditionally designed Beehive

Some members of the Dormitira Group

Chickens