Sponsorship of pupils continues in Tanzania

Thu 27th April 2017

WORKING abroad can often throw up unexpected challenges – something The Realising Dreams Foundation has had to navigate through over the last few months in Tanzania to secure the continued educational sponsorship of our 18 pupils.
Our foundation began a partnership in 2016 with a privately-run school in Tanzania where we sponsored the education of a number of pupils.

The pupils at The Charity English Medium School were eager to learn, ambitious with their dreams of a career beyond their local village and had benefited from English language teaching. But because their school, like others, operated on rented land, the government would not complete their registration despite the high quality of education being provided. Then at the start of the year, a change in the law meant that every unregistered school was forced to close its doors – including The Charity English Medium School.

Chairman Ron Burges explained: “Our foundation has been very grateful for the support of colleagues like Steve Ngugi in Tanzania as well as volunteer Alan Cram who visits Tanzania as part of his work with other charities. Over the last few months they have visited our pupils at the two new schools where they have been studying.
“The Goodwill School and the Sotwa Wilson School are similarly privately run and provide English teaching. They are both registered with the government and so provide a stable education for our pupils. Although our partnership began through The Charity School, our focus and responsibilities were to our pupils.
“We are reassured by the feedback we have received from our contacts in Tanzania. We have now agreed payments totaling £4,000 between both of these schools to cover the costs for our 18 pupils for this full school year. These costs include brand new school uniforms for each pupil.”

At Goodwill School we will continue to support 6 pupils – Devotha, Julieth, Vivian, Derrick, Abduly and Hajra.
At Sotwa Wilson School we will continue to support 12 pupils – David, Dorice, Shyness, Aziza, Fanuel, Asia, Valentina, Aisha, Esther, Davis, Edith and Fredy.

Realising Dreams Chairman Ron Burges concluded: “Working abroad can have its challenges, but we remain focused on finding a solution that would mean we did not let down the pupils we had sponsored. I am delighted that, with the help of our local contacts, that these children are all settled in their new schools and we look forward to hearing about their progress.”