Realising Education for Development

We are committed to solve the literacy reading challenge to young people in schools in Tanzania. Three main issues to be addressed; scarcity of school resources , lack of students empowerment programs to improve learning and lack of teachers capacity building programs.

UNESCO report 2020 shows sub-Saharan Africa, 64% of primary and 50% of secondary teachers have received minimum training, which does not include ICT skills and World Bank, 2018 shows despite Tanzania has sustained economic growth over recent years, but only 25% of the population complete secondary education and 1 in 4 remain illiterate.

We create inspiring library stocked with books. We build student's capacities to integrate technology in their learning through Soma Connect, we empower them to improve reading and we upskill teachers with more advanced teaching methodologies.

If scaled globally, we will have a learning generation which is highly performing and innovative to achieve standard for learning.

Literacy is a problem in schools, due to lack of resources, limited space for reading, lack of technology application and non practice of learner centred teaching. 

Child Poverty Report June 2019, express that in the 24 to 59 months the children aged 14-17 neither sat for primary school leaving examination nor passed.

World Bank, 2018 shows despite Tanzania has sustained economic growth over recent years, only 25% of the population complete secondary education and 1 in 4 remain illiterate

Factors contributing to illiteracy are;

Students are graduating from secondary school without mastering reading, writing and arithmetic. In 1986, the literacy rate was 90%, whilst in 2017 it had fallen to 68%.(Mwesiga Baregu. 2017. Worrying trends of education in Tanzania as illiteracy expands. The Citizen.)

Drop out;  UNICEF report 2018 shows that adolescent pregnancy led to almost 3,700 girls dropping out of primary and secondary education in 2016.

Gender issues; UNICEF Report 2019 stated  27% of girls aged 15-19 have given birth or were pregnant with their first child and 30% of young women got married before their 18th birthday. 

Our holistic library project integrated with technology will ensure young people in school are learning by improving their school investment. 

We work collaboratively to create a safe and inspiring library stocked with textbooks, fiction and non-fiction books that are language accessible. We provide ICT equipment including computers in the library with already established Soma Connect Platform where students and teachers have access to online resources and their capacities is built on the technical how.

We recruit and train Tanzanian University student volunteers to lead the library refurbishment projects. Whilst on-site they also provide engaging literacy activities such as creative writing and reading competitions and establish a reading club for students and teachers to continue. 

We upskill teachers with more advanced teaching methodologies which move away from content-heavy lessons towards pupil-centred, competency-based learning. This 3-day training programme is delivered by trainers qualified through the Ministry of Education Science and Technology and includes three core modules – textbook use, pedagogical skills and promoting reading culture.

University students remain as students mentors even after their engagement and Ministry of Education Science and Technology trainers are connected to trained teachers to continue sharing experience and lessons through Soma Connect platform under teachers discussion category in the dashboard.

Our main target group are students and teachers in schools . The government schools are our primary beneficiary, we support both primary and secondary schools students and teachers. 

We are currently working at national level and the target regions are Arusha at Monduli District Council (Maasai land), in here we have 1542, Ruvuma at Namtumbo District, in here we have 6024 beneficiaries, Pwani region (all districts) reached 7,002, Dar es Salaam region (Ilala, Kinondoni and Ubungo District, reached 21,020) and Dodoma reached 2014 students. In total in five (5) regions we have reached 37,602 students.

Despite of this big reach there are many schools remaining underserved and through this project we would like to impact at least three times of what we have alread reached in these five regions, the total number of 112,806 students  from five (5) schools in Pwani, Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Ruvuma will be reached in three years (2022-2024). We expecte they will be skilled with all necessary techniques to improve their reading and writing and their confidence will be built to improve self esteem

The reasons for their underserved is because all of the project we are implementing are not yet invested in their schools, and we would like to invest to create a young literate generation for their future prospect. We have proved that students who are engaged in our programs perform well twice compared to those who are not our beneficiaries and who are in the same environment compared to our beneficiaries. Taking example of Irikisongo secondary school in Monduli, it is among our beneficiary and perform very outstanding in the District (ony if compared to government schools).

Being part of the community through the work we do in the regions we support, we deeply understand these need, we do visit them and collect data that are shared to seek for support, it is through observation and discussion their need is opened and together and through examples of what has already been done to other schools is believed their schools are also going to benefit and improve.

Lack of access to quality learning including hard and soft school investment in the regions and districts we support including Arusha-Maasai land, Ruvuma, Dodoma , Dar es Salaam, and Pwani region.

The investment includes library, (space), access to reading resources, lack of in-service teachers empowerment initiatives, lack of programs that build student's confidence and Education related technology application that enable online quality learning.

Students and teachers  have limited access to the investment that promote quality learning, they don't have user-friendly libraries, no skill building program including inspirations and most of them don't know even how to use computers.

The solution has been implemented in 5 regions namely, Arusha, Pwani, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma but not covered all of the districts despite of the exisiting of the need and this has been due to limited funding. We have proved the holistic library project is among the great solutions to the government schools and has increased the level of performance, learning and exposure to both students and teachers. Due to this we have ambition to grow bigger and reach as many students and teachers as we can, and through reading promotion we change how Tanzania read!

The services that we have provided are holistic library refurbishment project where we have provided schools a silent room for reading, resources including books and computers, skills regarding library use and technology application and teachers professional development related skills

The model we have used in these schools are the same as we are planning to use in the other schools we are seeking fund for them. Soma connect tool have been used for technology application, youth led support for inspiration and motivation to build student's confidence and competencies.

Our solution is innovative because it encompasses integrated approaches to improve teaching and learning at once using both hard and soft empowerment investment to increase literacy level to students. Technology application considered as a key catalyst to increase readers for their learning and performance in schools.

We empower girls and boys in schools in a holistic and practical manner using both online and physical learning platforms, we unleash the power of education to alleviate poverty and show case the girls and boys potentials to support themselves, their families, community and national at large.

We ensure the beneficiaries' capacities are built in the areas of literacy reading and writing, understand how functional literacy work through development empowerment programs and positively transform their mindset towards resource increasing competencies, confidence and improving their self esteem to become independent and self supportive.

The beneficiaries are empowered to use technology to improve their learning aptitude. They will use Soma Connect to improve their technology based skills and increase their knowledge on e learning system to improve their performance in schools and life in general.

We provide them with connection and linkage opportunities to their mentors who are University students (youth) to have access inspiration and motivation sessions that guide them on carrier development and personal skills development.

Since we started the solution have served 130 schools in Tanzania with libraries and impacted 835,837 students and 822 teachers. Starting from 2018 the solution has reached 37,602 students in schools in Monduli-Arusha, Pwani, Namtumbo-Ruvuma, Kinondoni, Ilala and Ubungo-Dar es Salaam and Dodoma regions. Through technology application the solution has currently impacted 12 schools in Pwani (Kisarawe, Bagamoyo (Mandera & Mboga) and Mkuranga), Dodoma at Kisasa and Ihumwa and Dar es Salaam at Twiga, Fahari and Goba while in Ruvuma, schools including Nasuli, Selous and Namabengo benefiting students and teachers

We are expecting to serve another 47,442 students and 224 teachers in one year time for 10 schools and reach a total of 237,210 students and 1,120 teachers in five years.

We measure our progress by looking to 

learning indicators and performance indicators

In learning we have baseline data that was taken before the intervention regarding reading and performance, then we collect data during our monitoring visit to see the progress and in some school which we plan to exit we also conduct an endline evaluation to assess the impact of the work we do.

The following are the indicators that shows the milestones and impact

1. Number of students engaged in reading and ICT club
2. Number books provided to schools and are in use.
3. Number of students attending library regularly
4. Number of students improved in reading comprehension and fluency
5. Student performance improved
6. Teachers improved in application of advanced teaching methodologies
7. Number students who are able to have access and use of online resources
8. Number of teachers who are using mobile application to prepare their teaching materials.
9. Number of parents willing to support students while at home using their phones
10. Number of University students agreed to become mentors for students in schools
11. Literacy rate improved at community level
12. Teachers-students learning relationship improved
13. Student's evidence based creativity increased.

Since 2020 we have three (3) full time staff and 1 consultant and 2 interns together with 15 volunteers. 

Our volunteers have vast skills on issues regarding; literacy reading and writing, tax issues, ICT skills, auditor and gender and development 

We work directly with Ministry of Education for teachers skills.

Magdalena George-Executive Director. Have 16 years of experience in managing education projects, girls and women projects and youth projects.

Einoth Lekaaya- have 12 years experience on women empowerment and education projects.

Antony Edson- Has 6 years experience on Education Capacity building projects and adult education psychology related projects.

Nixon Mpaji- Has more than 4 years experience in finance management and banking management.

Upile Taji Liundi has two years experience in managing reading programs and she is in charge of reading club.

Calvin Chalo- IT officer- Has 2 years experience in managing Information Technology related project and he currently managing Soma Connect initiatives.

Eliya John Ndalo has one year in organisation supporting Soma Connect capacity building to students.

Diversity; we work with different people in the organisation both staff, intern, volunteers and consultants. We believe in everyone's potentials without looking at who is coming from where, no religions, culture issues and numbers of working years are considered in the work we do. We just learn on someone's potentials and tap into those opportunities to grow our work and improve our cause.

Equity; We have different policies that treat everyone fairly, no one has rights than the other. Gender is not a factor for favoritism rather the deliverables are the things we centre on. Men and women are all equal and all deliver 

Inclusion; there are nothing developed/designed that exclude some groups in our team because we work with different group in the community hence our policies and practices allows everyone's participations (staff, volunteers, inters, consultants and beneficiaries). What matters is to see the good change n the life of our beneficiaries.

We would like to empower girls and boys from this younger age for them to improve their literacy level, and be able to address their future socio economic challenges that are currently facing young adult due to low illiterates, and make the contribution to their society development.

We are applying to Solve because we expect to improve our knowledge and skills on the issues we are helping the community including children, teachers, girls, women, men and boys. We are looking to become expert on the skill issues that needs more improvement among our team including developing a business model, doable and cost effective solution technology, developing funding and revenue model that can make our project and organisation at large more sustainable and marketing and exposure for the organisation to recruit more donors and partners.

We applying to solve to also expand our learning network as well as our financial supporters 

Business model, we would like to learn and get support in this area because we feel we have the best product but the challenge is how we market and have doable strategy in place to sell our product.

We also need a support on public relation to where we can brand ourselves very well and market our product for the young people development.

We believe our core model is excellent but we fail on branding ourselves.

Technology, we get lots of feedback regarding how our Soma Connect is the best and need to be strengthened, packaged modernly to deeply support youth. We feel we need more support on how the software can best work well. The technical support is highly needed here. 

TGNP is among the best and key partner who is experienced on gender and development issues. While we work with schools we encounter lots of gender related challenges that need urgent support, issues like rape, early marriage, early pregnancy, non completion of primary and secondary school for both boys and girls though girls are among many.

Solve members, we would like to partner with Solve members to get the technical support including online system management issues, how to be able to add more content and features in the Soma Connect system to reach different target including entrepreneurs and University students.

We feel we are among the right fit because of the areas that ASA is supporting, we are on empowering students to achieve their life goal through our reading initiatives and we also empower teacher on advanced teaching methodologies.

For reading we use different assessment tools including EGRA from USA (Early Grade Reading Assessment ) and it has been a great help even to the students who are not in early grade. This has helped the organisation to understand the scope of the challenge.

Based on this we believe using the model available to empower teachers we can tailor made and apply it in Tazani.

We are requesting $ 20,000

Gender challenge; this is a serious challenge facing school going age youth in Tanzania. UNICEF 2019 stated that 27% of girls aged 15-19 have given birth or were pregnant with their first child and 30% of young women got married before their 18th birthday also 1 out of 10 girls aged 15-19 years experiencing sexual violence in Tanzania.

Based on the above challenge we would like the Women Prize to trust us to support girls in Tanzania to get empowered on reading, writing and technology use through our reading clubs that cut across both ICT for learning and reading promotion.

We have evidence based where girls have become more confidence, their competence level have increased and their self esteem have also improved. This assures their likelihood to stay in school and learn, to be able to say NO to violence and being able to express themselves to have access to their gender right.

Technology will allow them to learn how their fellow girls addresses the same challenges in schools and out of schools, we will promote the online discussion to where girls will have opportunities to share and interact.

We will have girls' mentors where girls' will be connected to and have roles models of their choices for learning purpose and performance.

We are requesting $30,000 to support 450 girls in one school a year, we expect to reach10 schools to benefit 4000 girls. In the end literate girls will be increased, likely to stand alone and fight poverty.