School of St Jude - Arusha Tanzania

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Peak Issue in East Africa - EDUCATION

To support education in East Africa, 3 Peaks 3 Weeks 2010 will support The School of St. Jude in Arusha, Tanzania.

The School of St. Jude is a sponsorship-supported English Medium School in Tanzania that primarily serves orphaned and vulnerable children from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds. The school blends the best of Western and Tanzanian instructional methods to instill critical thinking and high moral Christian values in students who will later become the leaders and builders of Tanzania.

In 2002 a young lady, Gemma Rice (now Gemma Sisia), from a sheep farm in Australia, opened a small school in Northern Tanzania with the help of her family, friends and local Rotary Club. What started with only a handful of children and one teacher is now in 2009 a thriving school of almost 1300 children and 350 staff. In January 2008 another free primary school with an initial enrollment of over 550 children opened. These schools really have the potential to influence the quality of Tanzania's future leaders.

Over 90% of the children at the school receive a totally free education as local and international sponsors individually cover the costs of not only the educational fees but also the uniform, stationery, transport, hot meal, snacks and drinks of each child. What makes this school even more special is the fact that this success comes about due to the group effort of thousands of ordinary people from all over the world coming together to do something quite extraordinary. Individuals, families, schools, church groups and service clubs are joining forces by supporting the school's various sponsorship programs.

Every day staff and students work hard to fulfil the school's philosophy of "Fighting Poverty through Education" helping our students break the cycle of poverty that has gripped their families for generations. If this is what such a team effort can achieve in six short years, then imagine what could be achieved in ten years!

Below is a letter sent to the 2009 Team from Gemma, Director of St. Jude's explaining where previous funding from 3P3W has gone to support The School of St. Jude.

To Everyone at 3Peaks3Weeks,

Thanks so much for supporting our school and for helping to educate our future leaders of Tanzania. I have
written this letter to let you know how your amazing fundraising efforts, which raised over $45,000 for St
Jude’s, will be used. The building is now completed thanks to you!

As discussed with you when you were all here, we allocated your wonderful donation towards the building
of two new classrooms. The two classrooms which we built thanks to you are in one of the new boarding
houses at The School of St Jude Usa River Campus. Next year the classrooms will be used by primary
students and from 2011 they will be used by our secondary students. These classrooms will be used for
after school classes/study time and they allow our boarding students to work into the night (if they want)
without having to leave their boarding house (as they just walk upstairs to go to bed when they finish their
study).

Here’s some background on our boarding houses. Ever since the school opened in 2002, parents have
been asking that we offer boarding, but because of financial reasons, we have put it off for as long as
possible. However, in response to various welfare, education and nutrition concerns, last year we
commenced boarding for all students in classes 4 and older and it’s been a HUGE success. Our kids no
longer have to wake up at 4:30am to start walking down the mountain to the bus stop, but most importantly
we’ve seen a tremendous improvement in nutrition, concentration span and academic performance.
With the future of the school going from strength-to-strength and growing each year our plans to educate
more and more students increase and we are very excited about what lies ahead for the future of Tanzania.

Thanks so much from everyone at St Jude’s,
Gemma

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