October news letter

The months of August through October has been amazing for KiliTech. We cannot thank enough the wonderful donors who have made all this happen!!

Soko Village School

Water, Power, Toilets and a Kitchen all new!

 

 

Soko Village School

Water, Power, Toilets and a Kitchen all new!

In August KiliTech brought water to the school and in this photo Laurel is enjoying a drink of fresh clean well water! KiliTech also hired Zola Power to bring solar power to the school and the church. This is the ONLY power in the area! The installation even includes a solar power TV! In the month of October we handed over the satellite dish to the teacher on duty. They were joyous and grateful for how KiliTech has been of great help in addressing the challenges facing their community particularly Soko primary school. In this village we have promised to help them repair the septic tank shown below.

 

 

The school toilet collapsed during May floods. Since May the teachers and students have been using a nearby field as the toilet and there is concern over disease and cholera outbreak.

KiliTech is also helping build a kitchen for the preparation of the food for the children. Before the kitchen was a shack, now they have shelter and storage areas so the food and cooking is safe and dry!

 

 

This is the kitchen before KiliTech

 

 

This is the kitchen after KiliTech

We have also planned to help those children without school uniform get uniform through Nyota Njema sewing group, the sewing group KiliTech provided sewing machines and lessons in Majengo! There are about 45 children without school uniform and they are not allowed to attend school without a uniform but they cannot afford to get school uniform. We are coordinating with Nyota Njema to come to Soko Primary school and get the sizes of these children and make them uniform. KiliTech will provide the Nyota Njema group the materials to sew the uniforms and pay the women for their work and cover the costs of the uniforms for the children.

 

 

Children wearing their school uniforms

Kiterini Village

Food for Kiterini Primary school

Kiterini village is one of six villages that make up the East Kahe Ward. Kiterini Primary School is the only school at Kiterini village. The school headmaster and his staff were able to provide some information about the school. The school has 15 class groups, 2 groups are from nursery to class 1-6 and one group for class 7. The total number of students in this school is 470.

 

 

 

 

Some of the challenges encountered and stated by the Kiterini school’s staff include:Insufficient Teachers, there are 6 teachers in the school so 78 students per teacher!Food Shortage, Non- conducive washrooms which causes UTI disease to most of the studentsPoor kitchen environment and insufficient school facilities like desks and shelves. With the challenges facing this Primary school KiliTech decided to do something about the situation. It took a lot of organisation through the Ward offices, village office and the school leadership and finally food was delivered to the children who really needed it.was delivered to the children who really needed it.

FGM and Family Planning Campaign

December is a time of FGM

East Kahe ward is faced with a lot of social and economic challenges. Like many rural areas in Tanzania it is faced with social challenges such as cultural practices that are abusive like Female Genital Mutilation, gender violence and child abuse. Other challenges include early pregnancies which have led to a large number of school drop outs. The ward is also faced with other challenges such as poor family planning, poor land management and food security. Understanding all these challenges the ward counselor, honorable Kamili Mbando, has decided to take the lead with the support of KiliTech to improve the situation!

 

 

Women play a large part in many productive activities in the ward. They spend a lot of time in the field cultivating the land but they are also the ones who take care of the children at home and usually have a large number of children to take care of. Understanding the great role that these women play in the community and the huge cultural challenges/disadvantages that they face, the ward councilor decided to launch a campaign that would lighten the burden that these wonderful women carry.

The campaign covers the entire ward and the message: “ZUIA UKEKETAJI KAHE, USIONE AIBU – PAZA SAUTI!! JALI AFYA NA UTU!! In English it translates, “STOP FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IN KAHE, DON’T BE SHY – RAISE YOUR VOICE!!! HAVE A HEART AND MIND YOUR HEALTH

 

 

Student showing her artwork for children’s rights

One of the areas where the campaign targets are schools and in this particular case Ghona Secondary School. This is the only Secondary School in the entire ward and more than 500 primary school children who complete primary school education expect to join here. The school organised an event on the 6th of October where they talked about child violence. The message was quite clear, stop child violence. The ward councilor and teachers participated in this event. At the end of the event the ward councilor encourage the students to come forward and report any incident that involved child abuse or any of violence against children. In September KiliTech learned that a woman was abused by her jealous boyfriend, and he cut off her breast out of jealousy. There is an effort underway to help the woman build a house for herself. This event caused much controversy and the ward counselor is in the process of creating a police station for the ward to pursue crime and grievous deeds.

Community Health Center

Soon to break ground

 

 

One of the biggest challenge facing East Kahe Ward is the provision of health services of lack of the service. A ward with more than 15,000 people without proper health care more than just a serious problem.

Through the generous donations raised in Colorado by KiliTech in July of 2016, enough money was raised to build a health center for the area serving four wards, or more, and over 50,000 people!! KiliTech, along with the people of East Kahe and together with the central government, will build this health center! Laurel, Thadei, and Kamili met with the Regional Commissioner (this was a big deal!) in October to discuss the strategy. KiliTech also hired legal counsel, Mr. Sandi, to represent KiliTech in writing a public – private partnership agreement between KiliTech and the government. The participatory approach has been used to involve everyone in building this wonderful center.

Laurel with Regional Commissioner, Mr. Warioba

The regional commissioner has encouraged the efforts of KiliTech of coming to the aid of the people in East Kahe and helping them build this important health facility. In the citizen magazine of 26th September issue the regional commissioner congratulated KiliTech for their efforts. All that remains for now is for the agreement to be completed and the construction will start immediately.

 

 

 

 

Newspaper articles in The Guardian and The Citizen announcing the new health center partnership with KiliTech

For More Information on KiliTech

Thank you for your continued support!! Visit our website:www.kilitech.org

The school faces a lot of challges and KiliTech will do what it can to solve some of these challenges. KiliTech cannot solve all of the challenges but together we are growing!!