Jambo Bukoba - Make children stronger through sports.

Jambo Bukoba provides life skills to children through sports, improves their educational infrastructure & awareness of gender inequality & HIV/AIDS.

The Problem

A baseline study was conducted with the help of German Academic Institutes, in the Kagera region of Tanzania, to determine the biggest problems causing the poor performance of school children of the region. The study  concluded that  the poor teaching skills and educational infrastructure, deeply established gender inequality, lack of awareness of risks associated with HIV/AIDS infections were the main causes of the poor performance of school children specially for girls.

The Solution

Since these separate issues are interrelated, a multidimensional approach with sports as its core has been evolved.

• Improving Poor Teaching Skills :

The German Sports University developed a methodology for Jambo Bukoba, specially suited for the African society. Since the sports teachers lacked skills to address taboo issues like HIV/AIDS awareness, Gender Inequality, Menstrual Hygiene etc., they are specially trained in special workshops in sport pedagogy, experienced based learning, what are Life skills & how they can be promoted in school children. This approach enhances teacher’s limited skills and changes his traditional mindset and then, using sports, that knowledge can be transferred to up to 500 children per teacher per year. This methodology is available to all the teachers in a manual in English & Swahili.
(https://www.jambobukoba.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jambo_Bukoba_Teachers_Guide.pdf)

• Improving Poor Infrastructure:

The participating schools in this program of each of 8 districts take part in a sports competition called District Bonanza to show how well the Life Skill idea has been taught in the school. The  winner receives funds sponsored by Jambo Bukoba & the local community  to improve their school infrastructure by constructing / renovating their class rooms, library, teacher’s room, toilets, water tanks etc. as prioritized by the local community.
All the 8 districts compete in a Regional Bonanza which is graced by VIPs, local & German sponsors, Media etc. to win a trophy every year.

• Beneficiaries:

So far 516.143 of primary school children have been covered in 884 schools whose  1730 teachers  have gone through the training program & 42 school infrastructure projects have been concluded.

• Impact:

The reported impact has been that the success rank of the primary schools of the Kagera Region has gone up in the national level, school attendance has improved and the children specially girls have become more successful in academic and at social level.

• Future Impact

In the meantime, seeing this success, Jambo Bukoba has been requested by Iringa Regional Commissioner to introduce this program in Iringa region too. Iringa has the same problems as in the Kagera region as far as HIV/AIDS infections, early pregnancy related school dropouts, quality of educational & sports infrastructure for children etc. are concerned.
A memo of understanding between Jambo Bukoba and the Regional Commissioners office has already been signed. Trilateral agreement amongst Jambo Bukoba and the regional governments of the Kagera & Iringa Regions of Tanzania have already been reached.  
Jambo Bukoba needs additional funds to launch the JB program in Iringa’s 5 districts affecting 479 schools with 193.744 primary school students and 958 primary school teachers.

The sports teachers are trained for 5 days in workshops in “Life Skills Through Games” to raise risk awareness of HIV/AIDS, gender inequality, menstrual & general hygiene. These include innovative theory & exercises as described in the teacher’s guide (https://www.jambobukoba.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Jambo_Bukoba_Teachers_Guide.pdf) to address difficult social issues by using sports as the vehicle.

Our process allows us to interconnect local communities, various administrative levels in Tanzania with international corporations, foundations, institutions and NGOs to provide holistic and professional solutions.

Our innovative organization, method & process has been awarded Ashoka Fellowship, Prize by the German Chancellor and funding by UNO  etc.

Jambo Bukoba uses all aspects of  modern IT & communications technology for its  organizational & operational efficiency as it is headquartered in Munich Germany & local operational team is in Northern Tanzania.

We realize that our methodology and process can be further optimized in Tanzania by using modern Internet based tools for example for networking of schools, teachers communication & social networking etc.

However, the lack of modern communication & IT infrastructure in rural areas and expenses associated with it,  force us to  avoid heavy dependency on sophisticated technology so that its disruptions do not cause operational slowdowns.

The next goals for the period of 12 months are

• Deployment of the Jambo Bukoba Solution in the Iringa  region of Tanzania
• Deployment of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH) in Kagera in schools
• Investigate how to provide facilities of water harvesting  for drinking purposes in schools

Horizontal Expansion is deployment of existing scope of Jambo Bukoba methodology, process in new areas utilizing optimized and more intelligent deployment, organizational & financial model. We will be piloting these new models in the Iringa region.

Under Vertical Expansion we understand issues like WASH, providing drinking water in schools etc. Another issue right now being investigated  is vocational training for children under the Project Jambo Bukoba Campus.

Using these strategies Jambo Bukoba plans to dramatically increase its area of operation as well as number of benefitting persons.

The  local Jambo Bukoba team appoints project managers  for various districts whose job is to maintain contacts with the local communities, school management, district education / sports officers. Based on these contacts Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) reports are prepared, discussed with the local stakeholders as well as with Headquarter staff. Periodic evaluation meetings take place at community, district & regional levels with proper authorities to discuss project status, highlights as well as roadblocks or operational deficiencies. The  M&E findings are also published in our annual reports. This transparent process allows us to  retain active participation of our stakeholders.

So far 516.143 of primary school children have been covered in 884 schools whose  1730 teachers  have gone through the training program & 42 school infrastructure projects have been concluded.

The reported impact has been that the success rank of the primary schools of the Kagera Region has gone up in the national level, school attendance has improved and the children specially girls have become more successful in academic and at social level.

On top of the  current activities we plan to launch our activities in Iringa which is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions with a population of about 950,000. It has the same problems as in the Kagera region as far as HIV/AIDS infections, early pregnancy related school dropouts, quality of educational & sports infrastructure for children etc. are concerned.

A memo of understanding between Jambo Bukoba and the Regional Commissioners office has already been signed. Trilateral agreement amongst Jambo Bukoba and the regional governments of the Kagera & Iringa Regions of Tanzania have already been reached. 

As a non-profit organization we have very extensive list of partners from commercial corporations, academic organizations, multilateral institutions, media organizations etc.

We operate with 8 fulltime employees & 71 honorary volunteers coming from various professional fields like financing / controlling, IT, Project Management, communications etc. Moreover, we work very intensively with experts networks of organizations like Ashoka but also with strategic consultant companies as well as academic organizations like universities etc.

The main reason for being an attractive NGO is our total transparency and flat organization.  

The revenue model of Jambo Bukoba is based on the membership fee of the organization, grants form various commercial and  other organizations as well as donations from various foundations and personal / legal entities. The donations are sometimes in cash and at  other times in material or services form. For example, the office rent, IT services , auditing services etc. are provided by corporations without any cost for Jambo Bukoba.

Jambo Bukoba is also drawing plans for transforming itself into social enterprise which will try to generate revenue by offering its expertise & services to other organizations and thus introduce additional financial options for itself.

As  mentioned earlier we plan a transformation from donation / grant funded NGO to a sustainable social enterprise. We believe this a prerequisite for our horizontal & vertical expansion plans.
To professionally execute this transformation, we believe we can benefit immensely from Solve support in the areas of  organizational & financial transformation. We also require help in media communication to increase our visibility as well as funding opportunities. We may also benefit from legal and investment guidance in international areas.
We believe organizations providing mentorship and actual help in these areas will be of great help to us.

The two major goals for Jambo Bukoba are the transformation to social enterprise as well superb execution of our horizontal / vertical expansion plans. Both these topics offer us excellent opportunity and at the same time pose major financial risks. Our situation is very similar to a successful startup planning major expansion and unsure of hazards if not managed  properly could cost our existence. Therefore any help which we can receive overcoming these hurdle are more than welcome.