The School and Community Build Project Tanzania
With the help of a huge number of donors ranging from children who gave their Sunday school money, the many attendees at our fundraising evenings,
private donors and one or two generous corporate sponsors, the AZAR team
finally travelled to Dodoma in central Tanzania in the Summer of 2006 to
complete the first phase of our primary school building.
The project began in 2003, when a small group from the UK worked in the area
with Habitat for Humanity to build three decent homes in partnership with three
low-income families. Plans for an eventual number of 300 families on the site
prompted community leaders to ask if there could be some assistance to build a
primary school as the nearest local school was quite a distance away and
already somewhat overcrowded with up to 160 children in some classes!
Eight of the original team of twelve volunteers were able to commit to return
and worked hard over the next three years to raise funds and plan the school
build.
A new registered charity, AZAR (meaning ‘helper’) was established to facilitate the process and the group arranged many events
to raise awareness and recruit new members to come and help with the build. The
result of this work enabled an amazing team of 32 volunteers who, financing
their own expenses, travelled to Tanzania in August 2006 to help with building
the school. With the aid of local volunteers and paid artisans (Fundis), the
first eight classrooms of the school were completed. Simultaneously we also
managed to build three more houses, for local families, in partnership with
Habitat for Humanity.
Unskilled but supervised volunteers dug pit latrines, laid block, mixed cement,
plastered walls and raised roofs. They connected with the local community in a
way that no ordinary tourist ever could; living and working alongside them,
swapping stories of families and lives at home, singing songs and sharing
lives.
In their leisure time the teams visited other local schools, orphanages and an
HIV/Aids mission and research centre. They also had some time for excursions to
local rural communities and finished with some quality leisure time on the
beautiful island of Zanzibar at the end of all their hard work. There were
grand celebrations on the site too at the end of the build, accompanied by
drumming, dancing and feasting.
The AZAR organisers were delighted to receive the news that local government had
later inspected our school and were very impressed by the quality of materials
and workmanship.