Disabled Youth Education Project

In Tabora, Tanzania, young people with physical disabilities face significant barriers to completing their education. For girls from families experiencing severe financial hardship, those barriers can be particularly difficult to overcome. This term, Just Wheels has been able to help two determined young women, Grace and Agnes, continue their secondary education and take an important step towards their ambitions for the future.

Grace is now in Form Five at Mwadui Secondary School, where she is studying History, Kiswahili and English. Her ambition is to become a lawyer and use her career to protect and promote the rights of people with disabilities. Agnes has started at Mpanda Girls Secondary School, studying History, Geography and English, and hopes eventually to become a social worker supporting and empowering people with special needs. Both girls were selected in close consultation with Mr T, a specialist special-needs teacher who has known them for many years and understands both their circumstances and their determination to succeed.

Our funding is helping to remove some of the practical and financial barriers that could otherwise have prevented Grace and Agnes from continuing their education. Support has covered school fees, uniforms, textbooks and transport to their new schools for entrance examinations, as well as a new wheelchair where changing physical needs made this necessary. Mr T has also helped the girls make the transition to their new schools and ensure that their accessibility needs are understood and supported.

For Just Wheels, providing a wheelchair is often the beginning rather than the end of our relationship with a young person. Our longer-term aim is to help children and young adults with physical disabilities participate more fully in education, family and community life and ultimately have greater independence. We hope that Grace and Agnes will successfully complete these crucial final years of secondary school, take their Advanced Level examinations and have the opportunity to progress to university, college or vocational training. We look forward to sharing their progress with you over the coming months.