Education Through Sports for 400 girls in Tanzania

Dear friend,

It has been nearly three months since you supported our project “Education Through Sports for 400 girls in Tanzania” on GlobalGiving.com. With this report we want to share with you what has happened in the project during the past few months.

Girls Action Clubs have been active in every nine (9) project secondary schools reaching over 400 adolescent girls weekly. The Action Club year has been divided to periods and each period consists of one health or life-skill topic. The Girls Action Clubs start every period by studying the topic and in the end of the period they present what they have learned in a creative way (poems, drama, dance, art, etc.) for their school. From February to May, the Action Clubs studied Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and finalised the topic by preparing a drama play showing their knowledge on the topic.

In May, Sports Development Aid organised a seminar for 63 “Girls Action Club” peer leaders, nine (9) teachers from our project secondary schools and 18 traditional girls’ initiation ritual leaders. The seminar topics were Netball and Women’s rights. The participants were discussing about traditional gender roles and learned the measures and procedures how to recognise and report gender-based-violence act in school, at home and in the community. The seminar was successful and the participation was active. In the following weeks the peer leaders will share their new knowledge with their Girls Action Club members and other peers in and out of school. In the end of the seminar the girls from different schools were sharing their thoughts about our project and its impacts on them. The following is a feedback from Form IV girl from Mangamba Secondary School.

“I am so happy to be here with you today and I am so thankfully for SDA to introduce Empowered Girls Speak Out project for our school. There are a lot of schools in Mtwara Region, Mangamba benefits from this project. There are a lot of impacts for me individually and for the school and a society generally.

Here, we listed some positive impacts of the project in our school: increased self-awareness and ability to believe in ourselves; increased passing rates in our school (especially girls’); reduced school drop outs; increased ability to stand by ourselves and make our own decisions; no early pregnancies and increased passing rates/better performance in the form four final examinations.”

In addition to the work in schools, we have had four (4) educational football events in Mikindani, Mitengo, Nanguruwe and Libobe Wards reaching many people and addressing the importance of girls’ rights for education and sexual and reproductive health.

Your engagement helped us to reach our “Accelerator” goal which allowed us to become a permanent GlobalGiving member. To reach even more girls and make even longer lasting impact to their lives, we continue to ask for your support. Maybe now after taking the first step, you could become a recurring – monthly donor for our girls’ project? By signing up as a recurring donor, GlobalGiving takes automatically your monthly donation from your account and directs it for our project. Recurring donors bring stability and security to our work, enabling us to make longer-term plans creating even greater impact for the benefit of the girls. We thank you again for your support, and would appreciate if you could share our campaign and our goals to others around you who might be interested in helping our cause.

With best wishes,

Sports Development Aid