Vocational Project and Kindergarten Project

Vocational Project and Kindergarten Project 

In order to help children who are suffering from the lack of education, James Elyaman, the community leader in the village of Mwika, small village in Tanzania, started the vocational school and pre elementary school projects .

Who is James?　Background of James   

1992 seven Primary school in Kilimanjaro

1993-1996   Form 4 secondary school

1997-1998   Vocational school  Carpenter 

1999-2000   Imara Furniture in Moshi town

2001- now     Vocational school Lutheran church

From 2001 onwards, James started to teach children at the vocational school. He has been teaching carpentry since then for about 10 years. He has 28 students in the morning class while 33 students in the afternoon class. He chose to teach carpentry for youths because it is very simple and it doesn’t require resources like electricity. Especially this is important in the villages in Tanzania where electricity goes down every once in a while.

Many of the graduates start their own business deploying their knowledge they acquired in the vocational school. Some equipments and tools that are needed to start carpentry business such as hammer, saw, claps, chisel, and tape measure. Since it requires neither capital nor resources, they can start their business as long as they have skills to produce some products.

In 2007, James met American tourists group who will later help him to start new projects of kindergartens, which he had been planning for 4 years. This project aims to offer opportunities for local kids to have pre-elementary education. In Tanzania, Children have to complete the kindergarten education in order to advance to the elementary education level. However, many parents tend to neglect to let children go to kindergarten due to the financial hardships especially in the village. Here in Muwika, there used be kinder garden, but it closed because parents could not afford to pay tuition fees. Although majority of children enroll in primary education, many of them tend to drop out from the school for many reasons. In the face of challenges they face in the village, James launched a kindergarten where not only local children but also children from other village can prepare for elementary school following years to come in Mwika.

According to James, children in the villages are stuck in the vicious cycle of the poverty. If they don’t have money to pay, they cannot attend the school and then they become poorer as a result because they luck the skills required to gain the jobs. Especially, in the village opportunities for the employment are quite limited, which make the matters worse.   In order to address this vicious cycle in the village, he started his school. Currently, the revenue of this school is mainly coming from the aid of the American church. They made a contract that is due for 5 years, which means the contract will last till next year. He is looking for another source of revenue to continue his school. Otherwise, he will be forced to shut down his project. On top of the aid, he earns revenue through tourism and this is where we, JEAN, get to know his project. When we visited Tanzania, James served as a coordinator of the trip and arranged pretty much everything from the hotels to the cars. In return for his help we gave some contribution that will be used for his project. Likewise, he is looking for someone who want to come to Tanzania and explore the real life in the village as well as famous tourists spot like Zanzibar and Safari.