The last 3 months have gone too fast with its bits of challenges but Twende family has been able to work hand in hand with different schools and partners as always to reach its s goal of sparking innovation in young minds, the workshop has been filled with smiles from students across Arusha.
So far we have worked with almost 200+ people through the programs that are happening at Twende including LED Outreach, Build its and Creative Capacity Building (CCB). Among these programs, participants were engaged in making different kinds of stuff for their daily use for example students got to make rubber squeezers and the blackboard dusters to be used by their schools instead of school buying them.
We have reached 105 students through LED outreach, where we got to spread the word of Twende and let them light the LED and get to review Ohms law practically as many schools especially public schools don’t have laboratories and tools/materials for practical sessions. Then interested students get to sign in for other Twende programs particularly Build It which makes the total of 65 who come to Twende to build different things including blackboard dusters, rubber squeezer and other electronic tools like flashlights, solar phone charger and many others.
We also worked with groups of street youths and women groups (50 in total) through Creative Capacity Building (CCB) program where they get through design cycle for three days, then get to list several challenges they wanted to work out solutions for the betterness of their lives in the near future. Some of the projects out of this include vegetable cutting machine, blackboard chalk mould, liquid soap mixer, wax pressing machine, coconut oil extractor, food warmer and transporter container etc.
As we also offer a working space and we received people with their innovative project ideas who wanted to prototype them. For example, currently, we are working with students from Tumaini Senior Sec School who are working on the electric generator which will collect power from motorbikes and store to be used for other purposes example lighting. They get to apply for the competition organized by the Government so they asked for support in terms of working space, Technical, presentation tips.
We also received visitors and volunteers/interns who came for different purposes like learning, experience sharing, knowing and understanding what Twende does and also helping Twende to grow further in one way or another.
Conclusion: it has been a fruitful Quarter, reaching out to students and communities like never before, partnering with different organizations and schools such as Aga Khan University, Fues Foundation Mwandet Secondary School and Senda Success who also promised to work with us on holiday and weekend basis.
Hello Good People!
The year is coming to an end and Twende has been running several activities from hosting visitors to running workshops and continuously building strong partnerships.
We had a great time with the Jamii Tech Program graduates (Youths from Universities and the communities) whose final presentation was done by early October, whereby nearby communities and Partner organizations graced us with their presence. This team has been so great since it comprised of hard-working, self-motivated students who cooperated well with us as well as the communities they worked with to achieve the goal of solving the problems faced by the specific community. The successful projects being made, tested and taken to the community include the Powder soap mixer, Dough maker, Dish Washer and the Automatic rice planter. Currently, the machines are being used by the community then follow-up is about to start to see how and where to help more for better functioning of the prototypes then develop them to the products.
What’s special about this year’s program is that, even after the program ended, one of the participants returned with interesting project ideas which he managed to make. The functioning prototypes include Automatic toilet hand washer and door opener, a manual simulation of car-driving games and a dough-kneading machine which is a supplement to the dough making machine.
In terms of progress, there is fabrication done by some of our innovators including Manure spreader, multipurpose wheelchair and the avocado oil extracting machine. This was made possible by the support provided in terms of funds by the Commission of Science and Technology (COSTECH) in Tanzania which seeks to support them in their final prototype stage for them to get feedback from the community and finally hit the market.
Our technical team has been working with individual workshop users who come to seek for technical advice and the maker space to practice their project ideas. We received several students who had different ideas and some have done some projects before so they have presented their ideas to receive advice which enlightened them to do more. One of the youths who has been using the maker space and received advice was working on the Simple carrot harvester and washing device of which he managed to make the prototype and he is still working to develop the prototype further.
We managed to run a build-it workshop with some of the school kids who came for a school tour, where they got to learn more of what we do and got the opportunity to make simple build-it items that relate to their class topics and other technical stuff like soldering, measuring, cutting as well as other skills like recycling. The items made include flashlights, blackboard dusters, and rubber squeezers together with other fun projects like a fun toy gun made by one student which made him proud of the achievement that motivated other kids to try things too.
In other news, we had a prestigious visit from Deutsche Welle who featured our most recent activities including one of our successful inventors who is brining impact to his local community through local innovation.
Twende is currently conducting holiday programs which will involve a lot of youths (Youth camps) and kids from different schools who will participate in Creative Capacity Building and Build-it workshops for the kids. We have registered several numbers of up to 40 youths for the programs officially kick off on the 10th of December, the team is setting up everything in place ready to start the program and end the year with a bang.
Twende loves bringing impact to the local community. We love that you continue to support us and keep track of what we are up to. Do sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.
Remember, we do this because you help us. Thank you very much for your continous support!
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Hey Twende Folks!
Wow, the third quarter is almost over! And we have had numerous activities here at Twende. We had the pleasure to reach out to the community and host different guests who had different life-changing projects. We can’t thank you enough for the support to reach our goals.
This third quarter was filled with a wide range of activities like Creative Capacity Building (CCB) training, build-it workshops, the Annual Agriculture Show (nanenane) and the Jamii (community) Technology Program.
In our CCB and Build-it workshops, we have successfully worked with our 2 amazing interns who incorporated Arduino technology in our training where we reached out to 60 students of 3 different schools where both students and teachers took part in this incredible training program. The participants learned how to use electronic tools like resistors, breadboard, jumping wires, cables, Arduino and laptops just so they can learn how to program computers into doing what you want them to do and to see if they can get more interested in programming lessons.
In August we had the opportunity to reach out to many people through the Nanenane exhibitions. Nanenane day on Aug 8 every year celebrates the important contribution of farmers to the Tanzanian economy.
This year we managed to showcase our innovations just outside our premises where we had a tent and innovations outside to display. The aim of showcasing our products is to be able to build a larger network of potential clients and innovators who will keep working with us to create more technologies to solve community challenges.
It is also one of the opportunities we have to market Twende’s programs and activities to new people. Creating awareness on how technology could change more lives and make such a huge difference in it. We talked to students of various schools, community members and telling them how Twende could work with them while solving their problems in the society through local innovation.
The Jamii Tech Program brings local University students as well as international youth together with a specific community, and together they team up to identify a specific problem within that community that they can solve together using their innovative ideas and abilities. These innovative technologies are created from scratch in hope to go through many prototype phases and finally a finished product that can be used by the community it was created to help.
This year, the program started on the 12th of August and it includes 8 students from Tanzanian Universities who will be trained and work on projects for 8 weeks and 2 communities to work together with the students for one week. These communities include 2 Groups which make a total of 15 members. So far we are in the fifth week of the program where students are working on their prototypes and are getting guidance from our amazing team of trainers and staff before presenting them to the community members for feedback.
Twende loves bringing impact to the local community. In the next few months, we will have more creative capacity building programs and continue to follow up on how individual projects are doing as well as continue to work on our new project. We love that you continue to support us and keep track of what we are up to. Do sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.
Remember, we do this because you help us. Thank you very much for your continuous support!
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Hey Twende Community!
What a journey it has been! Even as we close up this wonderful project, we cannot fathom how great of help this whole community here has been in accomplishing our project with the youth of Arusha, Tanzania in the past months. It has truly touched our hearts at the workshop, but even more, it has had a great impact on all the people we managed to reach thanks to you!
This project has managed to reach 493 youth in the north-eastern regions of Tanzania, where 275 were girls and 218 boys. We have also been lucky enough to conduct 26 programs both in our workshop and in different schools and communities neighbouring us. We are grateful to our team, particularly Epifanis, Bernard and Chris, who make up the Elimu (Education) Team, who continuously develop better ways to engage with our youth in the Outreach programs.
We will continue providing our creative capacity building programs to the youth of Tanzania as we carry our vision to empower Tanzanians with innovative solutions to real community challenges that they can create through our programs, and we hope to reach further into the more rural areas of our region, with hopes that we can service more people with the opportunity to solve problems using innovation.
This is definitely not goodbye; please do keep a look out for more of our projects. We are always grateful for every donation given to our cause, and we always look forward to giving you updates of how great of an impact your support is making.
We could have not done this without you. Thank you so so much! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.
With immense gratitude,
Ellie and the Twende team
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Hey Twende Community!
It’s a brand new year, and we are so close to finishing our project goal! We are so excited and cannot thank you all enough for making this happen! Twende may be a small community here on the ground, but it expands to a movement here. You are all so appreciated!
We have had the pleasure of interacting with plenty of youth aged between 13 and 35 these couple of months (299 to be exact, with 146 of them being female)! It has been an experience seeing all these participants experience Twende through our various programs.
In our Creative Capacity Building program, we worked with 25 girls and 10 boys. The 25 girls are form IV graduates from a Maasai community in West Kilimanjaro. After finishing their secondary education, the girls have been heavily involved with agriculture and small businesses like making and selling jewellery as a means of generating income. The group was a pleasure to work with as they are hard workers who managed the activities really well and with ease. They were very excited to make things like the cone-shaped maize sheller and simple chairs as these were things that directly relate to their daily life.
The other group consisted of 10 boys who participated in the same Creative Capacity Building activities, particularly taking a deep interest in creating electronic-based technologies and produced wonderful, useful technologies.
The groups together were able to make a series of projects, including a simple cart to carry water across long distances, an automated padlock and the fire detector. These projects are progressing and will be tested as more prototypes are made, whilst ready products like the cart are already in use in the West Kilimanjaro community!
We have also had other programs running. We usually implement short LED training (involved introduction to electric circuits and the basic functions of resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc.) at various schools, and this is followed by a Build It session at Twende if the school and the kids are further interested in building the innovative skills they obtained from the LED Training. We were happy to receive 98 girls and 122 boys from different schools are interested in taking the LED Training. They were able to see other examples of what other kids from other schools made and practised making circuits and Ohm’s Law using vivid examples. The aim of doing this is to get the kids to see just how easy it is to transform knowledge studied in class to a real-life situation.
From these LED Training, we had 10 girls and 19 boys then opt to participate in our Build It program after showing great interest in the LED training in their respective schools. Every student built a flashlight and got to take it home at the end of the day. The Build It program is a three-day training where the kids get to make different technologies they can take home, and on the last day, the kids come up with their own technology that will help them solve a problem they saw at home, school, or community.
It has been awesome fun, and we are excited to hold more of these programs as we start to prepare for the Jamii Technology Program that will be held once again this summer. We are able to do these programs because of your generosity and belief in what we stand for at Twende; a better Tanzania with our own problem solvers in the community. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social accounts (Facebook and Instagram) or watch our GlobalGiving organization page.
Warmly,
Ellie & the Twende team
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