Why are we going to Tanzania

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Why are we going to Tanzania?

Here is the story.

During the 2005-2006 School Year, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) began this program to bring students and schools from around the world together to address global issues. Using the book by J.F Richard, High Noon: 20 Global Problems and 20 Years to Solve Them, NAIS framed a series of activities, then set the teams in schools to work on projects. They allowed schools to sign up in pairs or on their own and in many cases, assigned the global issue for teams to work on. You can read more about the program at www.nais.org/challenge2020. In the fall of 2006,USM signed up and was assigned two teams--one of them partnerd with International School of Moshi, Tanzania. We also got the task of poverty to work and study with our parnter school, and then implement a solution in our local areas.

We have had great attendance and energy at our meetings and dove right into to the topic poverty in Milwaukee and Tanzania. Then in December, we got lucky. There was a delegation from Tanzania in Milwaukee and many of us got to meet goverment officials, basketball players, and those who work on African issues in Milwaukee and in the US. We also learned of efforts by a local Milwaukee agency to establish a sister-city relationship between Milwaukee and Morogoro, Tanzania.

We quickly learned that local partnerships can have a great impact on buliding global awareness. Two key partners for our group are PACA (Pan-African Community Association) and Hope in Tanzania. These two organizations have been vital in spreading the word about Afican issues and the difficulties of
African immigrants in the US. We also learned that other schools, such as North Shore Country Day School in Evanston, IL, Marquette Univeristy and Condordia University were planning trips to Tanzania.

It comes down to simple economics and relationships. If you click here you can see that Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world: http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/eco_cou_834.pdf

so we know we will have a great impact. But we also know that with all the relationships we have developed in Milwaukee and Chicago that connected us to Tanzania, it is just as imporant to build partnerships for the long-term.

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Photos

Education in Tanzania
Students in the Manayra Ranch School--one place we will be visiting and working. Vast overcrowding is only one obstacle to education on Tanzania