|
What's Hot
|
|---|
|
Click any red box ( . . . ) for more. |
| ||||||||
| AUGUST 2010 | ||||||||
We all remember Kenya's bitterly disputed election of late December,
2007, and the ensuing violence that lasted for months in 2008. The
compromise then brokered by Kofi Annan included power-sharing and an
agreement to come up with a new constitution. That constitution has
been written and, as of this week, approved by the citizens. At right
is a supporter of the victorious "Yes" choice decked out in symbolic
green. Much has been written about the election and, equally
important, the nature of that new governing document. Here is a
sample:
Kenya gets new constitution, buries its demons with vote Daily Nation, Aug 5 Kenyans Approve New Constitution NY Times, Aug 5 Slideshow: Photos of the Election NY Times, Aug 5 Views of David Zarembka, Friends Peace Teams [forwarded by Ed Schmidt] AGLI, July 17 Why Kenya's referendum is important CNN World, August 2 Kenya constitution referendum puts confidence into Nairobi stock market Christian Science Monitor, Aug 5 | ||||||||
| JULY 2010 | ||||||||
| Computers reach Ngarenaro. Computer teacher Bernard Mlemeta has written to say "Thanks so much. We got all the P4 computers. We have interconnected them and have got internet to each of them. Thanks also for the printer and scanner and one switch which are working and are in good order. We are so much grateful for all this. We have now shifted into a new room which is bigger than the previous one. Thanks again and God bless you." The new room had already been planned and the timing with a World Computer Exchange shipment was perfect. | Sad news comes from MacKay, whose computer teacher Martin Kigula was killed in the horrid bombing of World Cup watchers in Kampala. This senseless act has brought a huge loss to individuals and the nation and is mourned not only in Uganda but also a world away by the school's TEAA well-wishers. Martin has been cut down in his early years as he strove to do good things, and only because Uganda is virtuous enough to carry out the peace-minded mission of a united Africa. Our hearts go out to the MacKay community. | |||||||
|
2011 Reunion(s)
NY-11 at Teachers College & EA11 in East Africa. | ||||||||
| See why you should come. | See who is coming. | |||||||
|
Report
on the TEAA Reading Project
Bill Jones, TEAA | ||||||||
|
It was simply clear that the work that students and I did was more
efficiently executed if students read. Readers, I came to see,
actually make themselves writers. The idea is just to get students
to turn pages and to enjoy doing so, just the way readers
everywhere do.
- Bill Jones, in this TEAA report. |
There is no greater divide in life than the one between kids for
whom the experience of learning to read is a painful or tedious
one,... and those for whom the experiences of reading and writing
are ... so intense as to offer a new life of their own.
- Adam Gopnik, in Angels and Ages | |||||||
| Single EA visa? Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, along with Rwanda and Burundi "are nearing agreement to collapse their borders so that foreigners will need only one visa to travel to any of the five," collectively known as the East African Community. NY Times, July, 2 more. | ||||||||
| JUNE 2010 | ||||||||
|
What's a BoG? Kenya's "public secondary schools are
administered by Boards of Governors appointed by the Minister [and]
are responsible for the hire and remuneration of support and
subordinate staff in public schools," states a 2008 article at
KIM, the Kenya Institute of
Management.
Also speaking of Kenya in 2008 a World Bank working paper on "Governance, Management, and Accountability in Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa," noted that "board members are political appointees [who] report to District Education Offices, which are the most local level of the education ministry." Some schools have told us that a board can play a useful liaison role for them in the community. The photo at right shows the Board at Gunga, a small school near Migori that TEAA has assisted with some lab equipment in recent years. That's our friend the principal, Okunya Milton, second from the right, standing. |
| |||||||
Principal Kwayu writes (June 27): Dear Mr. Henry,
Hope this email finds you and TEAA members all
well... [T]he funds for both chemisrty and English departments
were received... We will let colleagues in these departments use
the funds after 12th July [end of holidays] as intended, and as
usual you will be informed. On behalf of the school Board and the
whole community of Moringe Sokoine SS may I thank you and TEAA for
this very important support to uplift the academic status of our
school. Thank you so much!! Many greetings to Bill Jones and all
the other TEAA members. Sincerely, Kwayu.
|
Earlier message
Dear Mr. Henry, Shikamoo!! Greetings from our community to you and to all the TEAA members. We sincerely appreciate your support to Moringe Sokoine Secondary School. We will be keeping an eye on the arrival of these funds in our local bank and as usual we will keep you posted as well as making sure the money is used as intended. Once again we thank you and the grants committee of TEAA. Best regards, Kwayu. Also see grants #106 and #107 and recent visit for photos with explanatory context. | |||||||
|
Principal/Sister Shobha the principal of Ngarenaro writes:
Dear Henry, ... We got the money transferred to our account... Next week I will be going to get the text books... We have started our first term holidays from the 29th to July 4th when the students will come back to school. All the same, some of them will be around for extra classes. Thank you so very much for supporting us. Most gratefully, sister shobha | Always something new out of Africa, observed Pliny the Elder almost 2000 years ago. In East Africa the TEAA news is good (see items above and at left). More good news is the determination of a Maragoli-born author and gardener living in a Nairobi slum. On the down side, a virus is "ravaging cassava crops in a great swath around Lake Victoria." | |||||||
| MAY 2010 | ||||||||
|
From southwestern Kenya, Okunya Milton, head of Gunga Secondary
near Lake Victoria writes, to Ed:
It has been a long time but I do hope everything is OK and that everyone is doing fine. We are in the middle of a very cold season here and the rains are making havoc. Everybody is fine at school and we are working hard to fulfill our obligations. The reading project is doing quite fine as well as the story writing activities. Only last week did we write essays to mark international free press week and national nutrition week. We were however late to mark Donkey day yesterday. Maybe we shall organize one later. The rains have not done us very well. The other day the storm felled our kitchen and we are now in the process of reconstructing. Our roads are quite eroded and vehicles have raised their fares. We have constituted a new Board for the school with quite a number of new faces. We have also hired two new teachers this term. So far so good. Thanks and pass regards. -Okunya |
Five recent TEAA grants involve all three countries. Lunza Secondary near Butere, Kenya, has received funding books for recreational reading, textbooks and microscopes. Njiro Secondary, a recent start-up near Arusha, Tanzania is being funded for books across the curriculum. MacKay College in Kampala is collaborating with us in a pilot project with the reusable feminine hygiene pad called Afri-pads with the goal is of improving young women's school attendance. Participants will pay for a fraction of the cost. Ngarenaro in Arusha, Tanzania, TEAA has provided funding for textbooks principally in biology and chemistry and to some extent math and physics, as well as 10 reconditioned P4 computers arriving in June. And coming soon: a strong infusion of chemistry laboratory equipment at Moringe Sokoine Secondary in Monduli, Tanzania, along with another recreational reading project. | |||||||
| Where we get computers: TEAA gets its computers from the World Computer Exchange whose volunteers gather and test working used computers. They ship in containers that hold 200 or 400 desktop computers. These shipments are divvied up at the port of entry and TEAA has taken anywhere from 10 to 80 of the computers in a shipment, most often providing 20 per school. Recently we shifted from P3-based computers to P4s. WCE has also provided some technical assistance to the schools. | ||||||||
| APRIL 2010 | ||||||||
Wild Carnivore Conservation: TEAA-er Mike Rainy participates in
ecological studies and cooperative activity with his Maasai neighbors
in Kajiado district of Kenya, south of Nairobi. A few days ago he
invited a couple of us to join the Kenya
lion
and wild carnivore conservation forum on Facebook, saying:
"Let's work for lions and other top carnivores now under grave threat here in Kenya. I honour the huge task by the wildlife professionals in KWS and the various conservation NGO's in Greater Amboseli and in the Mara and Samburu and the Tsavos and elsewhere."
I joined and posted a
comment.
Mike has now written this: "Would be very grateful to you, Henry, if you could put the word out about this to our TEAA friends who taught in East Africa in the 1960s. Above all thanks for your quick response and support; it means a lot."
lion
| ||||||||
| MARCH 2010 | ||||||||
|
TRIP blog | ||||||||
| FEBRUARY 2010 | ||||||||
Roof and reading: "Finally we have a roof on the lab," writes an excited Principal Okunya from Gunga in southwestern Kenya. He also reports that ..."The reading project is going smoothly and Madam Lynnette is in charge. She has recommended that we buy more books because even the teachers are now keen on reading the books. The other day I found one of our school watchmen reading The River Between and though I reprimanded him as was expected, I was happy that the reading project will not just impact the students but the larger school community. Who knows, in the future we may also develop a library that serves the community." | ||||||||
| JANUARY 2010 | ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
| 1964: Dennis Chanter, British TEA with colleagues from Wave 4B and the Director General for Technical Cooperation appeared in this photo in the Times (London). In correspondence with Ed in 2008, Dennis wrote: "I found [the photo] among my father's effects a few years ago, after he died. I think I'm the one the back of whose head is in the bottom left of the picture." | 2010: Pat Gill, TEAA Grants Chair, is a public figure for her civic work in the famous Florida city where she resides. Now the St. Augustine Record has reported on her activities in Uganda, most recently a program to provide pregnant goats as a source of milk for families raising orphans. The article and its continuation also feature substantial coverage of current TEAA school assistance. | |||||||
| Book-lists are available! Schools seeking suitable books for an independent recreational reading project are invited and encouraged to look at each of two lists created by members of TEAA. On the home page you can roll your cursor over "What's Cool" and you'll be able to click on them. Or, right here you can click on Student Books 1 (a list by Kate Parry) or Student Books 2 (a list by Clive Lovelock). | ||||||||
|
Peter Indalo TEAA representative for Southwestern Kenya | ||||||||
|
Dear Henry and All TEAA.
May I on behalf of all the teachers, parents, students and schools you have been supporting, wish you, members of TEAA, a happy and prosperous 2010. The forming of TEAA was indeed a noble idea. Your solidarity, commitments and efforts in expanding TEAA activities and looking for both financial as well as material resources has with the years benefited many schools in Eastern Africa, a region where many of you served in the sixties. We want to thank you for caring, supporting and improving our school for the academic excellences of our children. In doing this you are indeed being in solidarity with us in developing our human resource for the benefit of the entire universe. →→ |
If President Kennedy and Tom Mboya of Kenya had not thought of
airlifting students from Kenya to USA, indeed Obama would have not
been born and Africa would have had up to now no woman Nobel winner
with the name of Prof. Wangari Maathai, a product of President Kennedy
and Mboya, two gentlemen who were both killed. I wish to say
that you may doubt the little dollar you are putting into this
work as some of you are retired men and women, but I want to
assure you and God knows one day it will come to light that you
did a great service to all of us.
May God indeed bless your work this year, support your families and friends working with you, and give you good health this year 2010. HAPPY NEW YEAR. - Peter Indalo | |||||||
| The TEAA Independent Recreational Reading Project arose during a school-visiting trip in 2008, as Bill Jones proposed the idea to every principal and language teacher we saw. He writes: "The goal is to develop a lifelong habit that has immediate benefits [by developing] intuitions that are crucial to language learning [but] are routinely stunted in the press of test-driven instruction that characterizes language teaching in East Africa." → → | With Kate Parry's assistance in creating a sample book list, with Bill's encouragement and coaching about how such a project can function, and with TEAA funding, several schools have now agreed to participate and a couple have reported enthusiastically that their entire school community is enjoying this initiative. Click to see Bill's report and his guide for teachers on how to start such a program. | |||||||
| Country Hits: This website had a good December, with 292 visits from 24 countries, including 31 from the UK and 16 from East Africa. more | ||||||||
 | ||||||||
| DECEMBER 2009 | ||||||||
| Weather, TEAA reading project: Principal Okunya at Gunga, in Kenya, is home now after marking KCSE exams, enjoying every moment before the new term, despite the weather. "The rains are washing away our roads again... I have read the story of your Kajiado colleagues with a lot of interest. The strange thing of nature is that right away that region is actually flooded and animals are being carried away by swollen rivers - the ironies of this country!... Am excited at the titles we purchased with Bill Jones's assistance and looking forward to seeing the program in place from next week." | ||||||||
Christmas Greetings to TEAA - with remarkable photos of a
difficult time - arrived this morning (December 16) from Mike Rainy,
who as part of TEA's Wave 4B, taught at Kagumo School in Kiganjo Kenya
and stayed on as a rancher, tourguide, environmentalist and friend to
neighboring Maasai. He and his wife of over four decades, Judy Rainy,
live in the Kajiado District of Kenya's Rift Valley Province, where
they graciously hosted TEAA-ers during the itinerant 2003 conference
that took us from Kampala via Kenya to Arusha.
Click here for the story of a year in their life.
| ||||||||
| NOVEMBER 2009 | ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
Worldwide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee will visit Kenya and
Uganda for the Web Foundation, which exists to bridge the digital
divide in Internet usage. He plans to "meet with government
leaders, development workers and educators to help support local
Web initiatives - such as improving local health and education."
NY Times, Nov 16
|
Kukupreneur project from Kenya has gained international
recognition. Maseno University students reached the semi-finals
of the Students in Free Enterprises competition in Germany for
their efforts to economically empower the community around them
with their winning poultry rearing project.
Standard, Nov 18
| |||||||
|
| ||||||||
Tanzania friend and excellent principal Sister Mary Shaija
(upper left in photo) has taken a new position as head of Njiro
SS, a small start-up school not far from Arusha. She wrote to
Henry with thanks and to report that she "managed
to get one book in each subject ... The teachers and students are
very, very happy to have those books... I hope you will come to
visit our school when you come next to Tanzania... These students
are from very poor families and some of them are runaways, orphans
and so on. So I want make them someone great in the society with
the help of God and with the help of people like you who believe
in the power of the youth... I love them much because they are
interested in studies and I want to give them my best for their
future."
Kenya friend and excellent principal Okunya Milton has written to Ed from Gunga HS - in the southwest, near Lake Victoria and the Tanzania border - that he's delighted at the prospect of having his school join TEAA's reading project. "As a matter of fact, ... our students come to secondary school with very poor background in reading and writing from lower levels, which affects their secondary school education. Since this term, we have programmed for each class 40 minutes daily of what we call library hour, during which the students get copies of past editions of newspapers to read for pleasure... We have also started a monthly essay writing competition." Okunya came to Gunga a few years ago from Mukuyu where we knew him as the deputy head. | ||||||||
| OCTOBER 2009 | ||||||||
| MacKay seeks to reduce its recurring expenses with an economical printing device and solar-powered computing. Principal Gertrude Sekabira informed TEAA-er Betty Castor that "We have requested providers to give us costs for comparison and for us to make a fair budget. I will be back to you after that. Tomorrow is our independence Day. We are going to celebrate. So I wish you the best." Reply: → | Hi Gertrude. We spoke of you and MacKay fondly at our Teachers for East Africa Alumni meeting last weekend. We all share pride in your good work. We will await the information of the costs associated with solar panels. Meanwhile, we too will celebrate your independence day. I remember my first visit on October 9, 1962! Have a happy and safe celebration. Sincerely, Betty | |||||||
| "Book harvesting was a big success" at Butonge, writes teacher Tobias Wafula on behalf of principal Vincent Wekesa, "as almost all the parents and the invited guests turned up and we were able to collect a good number of books. The ratio of books to students has changed and therefore we will be sending you the up-to-date ratio after compilation. Thanks." | ||||||||
| 2009 Conference was a huge success. Meeting in Atlanta, Oct. 1-4, we learned much about the goals, activities and methods of other NGOs, raised our own solidarity, and resolved to continue our efforts to assist education in East Africa. | Comments welcome. Your comments on the conference are welcome - organizational issues to goddard@rcn.com and those intended for the Newsletter to eschmidt1@sbcglobal.net . Also, check out post-conference items at Atlanta | |||||||
| SEPTEMBER 2009 | ||||||||
| Four new grants to Uganda schools have resulted from the recent school-visiting trip of Betty Castor and Sam Bell: the one described at right; awards to two other schools, Tororo Girls and New Kabale, for academic materials; and a small books grant to Kitengesa Community Library which also serves neighboring schools. With over 1400 students, Tororo Girls plays a critical part in secondary education for its region. New Kabale, near Kampala, encourages students to earn their fees. They are committed to teaching practical job-related subjects in addition to the required curriculum. | Unusual assistance: A water system with majority funding by TEAA has been approved for St. Bernard's, Kiswera. The school needs a well closer to the buildings for health reasons and to eliminate the time and burden of carrying water uphill. The well will be within the school land, adjacent to the compound. With enrollment of about 500 students, many of them orphans, the school receives no government support, yet continues to maintain high academic performance and commitment to scholarships for students in need. | |||||||
| Appreciation: Fred Tukahirwa and some colleagues started the school he mentions and he heads its board of governors. Betty Castor and Sam Bell paid the second TEAA visit a few months ago, and the first to occur with school in session. Betty and Fred worked out the particulars of a grant for textbooks and laboratory equipment which has now received approval. See note of thanks at right. → → | Dear Betty, We are really humbled by the generous grant you have approved for New Kabale Busega. Saying that we are overjoyed would be an understatement! We will send ... at least 3 quotations...for the lab equipment. Kindly extend our sincere appreciation to the members of the steering committee - Ed, Henry, yourself, Brooks - and any others I have not known yet. Best wishes, Fred | |||||||
| ||||||||
|
Best news yet for the reading initiative. Sister Mary
Shobha (mostly hidden, at left, in photo above),
the new head of Ngarenaro Girls (Arusha) reports, with
regard to recently purchased books, that "the
students are making use of them already for independent reading.
Not only the students, but also all the teachers and the
supporting staff are reading the books. I see them reading at all
spare times, from the oldest (Sr. Mary Neelima, the head of the
English department) to the youngest in the school."
This is the most positive report we've had for our independent reading project, originated and championed by Bill Jones. Book selection advice has come from Kate Parry and a financial contribution for books here and at MacKay from Students Against Lack of Education at the University of Massachusetts, via TEAA. |
Lab equipment raises hopes. "Many greetings
from Moringe Sokoine Secondary School, Monduli,", writes
the principal. "Hope this e-mail finds you and all
officials of TEAA in good health. Thank you for supporting our
Laboratory with different equipment. Mr. Samwel Sumari went to
Arusha last week to pay for the items he had in the invoice sent
to you previously...
We hope that now we are in a better position to uplift our academic standards as the students will be doing science practicals more often than before. Once again thank you for your support. Truly yours, Kwayu" | |||||||
| Better and faster computing. Computer teacher Bernard Mlemeta of Ngarenaro writes: "We are so much grateful for your help and services that the two good men (from World Computer Exchange's eCorps, at TEAA's request) have done for our school. We are able now to use the computers (sent by TEAA-WCE collaboration in 2008) better and faster than before. We are thankful and next time if some volunteers are coming please pass by and help us again." | ||||||||
| AUGUST 2009 | ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
Kenya, August 7: Website for
Gunga.
Thanks to an Elimu
project that aims to build "a website for every learning institution
in Kenya," the words of principal Okunya is available to all. "A door
of opportunity has opened," he declares there, and he promises a
positive answer to "whether truly we are a people of dedication,
innovation and sound judgment."
Tanzania, August 7: Technical exchange: Three TEAA-partner schools in the Monduli-Arusha-Moshi area recently participated in the eCorps project of the World Computer Exchange. Losivu Lembrice, the computer teacher at Moringe Sokoine, was part of the team that went to help with repair, maintenance and coaching of faculty at other institutions. He "learnt a lot and we did great things." Two of the schools visited, at our request, were earlier recipients of WCE computers paid for by TEAA: Ngarenaro and Weruweru. Uganda, August 12: Not one but two projectors will soon arrive at MacKay, thanks to careful shopping by Principal Gertrude Sekabira, who has found prices roughly equal to those for delivery in the USA. The funding comes from donations in memory of Arlone Child, long-time organizer and major contributor to the scholarship fund at the school. |
Kenya, August 14: Down the road from Obama's grandma, at John
Osogo HS in Port Victoria, comes word that our grant has been received
for math books at that school, the alma mater of Calestous Juma, a
professor of international development at Harvard and organizer of the
Victoria Institute for Science and Technology; he is also, thanks to
Brooks, a TEAA friend.
Uganda, August 21: Back in action, after being bedridden for a month with an injury, is Sister Clare Migisha of Iceme Girls School. She wrote Ed to say that she can now "move freely and sit at a computer." She has "informed the school commnunity about the funds you sent us. They were very grateful to you for your quick response and kind assistance." Most of the planned books and laboratory items have been purchased. Tanzania, August 21: Ever conscientious about involving his faculty in various phases of school responsibility, Headmaster Kwayu of Moringe Sokoine writes that it will be the head science teacher and his colleagues who purchase the chemistry equipment specified in our grant. Despite excellent teaching witnessed during the recent TEAA visit, exam results have been disappointing, says the headmaster, "due to insufficient experience with practicals." | |||||||
| ||||||||
| JULY 2009 | ||||||||
|
The main platform address at the Ethical Society of
St. Louis this month will be a presentation by Ed Schmidt, who is
a member of that organization as well as the founder and editor of
the TEAA Newsletter. An anticipated audience of 75 will hear
about "What TEAA and I are doing in East Africa."
Ed is at work assembling TEAA trip photos that tell our story and give a sense of what school visits are like. The event is a successor to his presentation to a smaller group in early 2006 that focused on Education in East Africa. | ||||||||
|
The head of a TEAA-assisted school, St. Joseph's Centenary
in Ndeeba, near Kampala, writes:
Hullo Henry. We hope this letter finds you well and in good health and my sincere regards to all of you at TEAA. Once again thank you for the kind donation of the science books and laboratory equipment. These have been of tremendous use to the students and staff. More students have joined the science class at A-level this year, a sign that their attitude towards sciences has changed with more access to experiments and personal study enabled by the availability of more textbooks. We are happy to report that our senior four students passed highly their National computer studies examinations of year 2008 and generally both O- and A-level National exams were performed well. We thank you for being generous partners in the development of our school and giving the less privileged students that we serve hope to look forward with optimism. We wish you a happy July 4 and look forward to working together. Peace and God's blessings upon your work. - Sr. Bernadette Nakafeero | ||||||||
| All of 2009 | ||||||||
