By Aimee Bessire | Founder and Director, Africa Schoolhouse
We have almost completed the first dormitory at the Milembe Secondary School, thanks to your help! After breaking ground in late January, the Africa Schoolhouse team has moved swiftly through construction from foundation to roofing!
Over the past three months, everyone has been hard at work making the dorm a reality. Architects Pamela and Scott of Scattergood Design reviewed the final details of the architectural designs with Engineer Benjamin, and Foremen Elisha, Amos and Mapambano to get their input and discuss construction plans. Each member of the team brings special skills to the project and has helped things go seamlessly.
Meet the team: As Project Manager, Kishosha oversees the big picture, project finances, relationships with Misungwi District, material purchases, and takes great care of the team. Benjamin oversees building engineering and works as general construction manager. Working with the District Engineer and with individual specialists, Benjamin has helped guide the creation of new details, such as the newly innovated window security grills hand crafted by a local welder. Elisha also helps oversee general construction and is a skilled mason and carpenter. He helps guide the whole team and has taught many men and women construction techniques. Amos is a master mason and has patiently trained so many members of our construction team. His attention to detail is simply breathtaking—watching Amos parge a wall is like seeing an artist at work! Mapambano is a skilled carpenter who has taught many others how to bring precision to the wood details of the buildings. Together, they work with the architects, innovating new techniques and constructing with great precision and attention to detail. Our architectural advisor, a professor from Ardhi University, the architecture and engineering school in Dar es Salaam, said he had never seen such beautiful foundation work before. As Elisha has said: “We feel proud of the work we are doing for the girls of Milembe School.”
The girls at Milembe have been closely watching the dorm construction and express how excited they are to move in. Each girl we talk with describes how much the dormitory will change her life: helping her have time to focus on studies and saving her many hours spent walking on unsafe roads to school and doing the household chores while her brothers do their homework. As Elizabeth said: “I hope I can live in the dorm! I want to work hard at school and become a doctor.” The dorm will hold 50 girls and one day we hope to build another dorm as part of this compound so that more girls will have the benefit of living at school and focusing on their studies. We want to help shift the secondary school completion rate rate of girls in Tanzania from 4% to 100%!
We are so thankful for all that you have done to make this dormitory a reality! We hope to start the hygiene building soon. It will be connected to the dormitory by a covered walkway and have composting latrines, bathing rooms, and sinks. Stay tuned—we can’t wait to update you as the next buildings go in!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
