Everyone has potential. Not everyone has the opportunity to tap that potential.
In 2008 and 2009 respectively, two educators from Chicago and a high school teacher from New Jersey traveled to Moshi, Tanzania. Here they volunteered at the two-room informal Kilimahewa Women and Orphans Center for Education (KIWOCE), teaching post-primary youth excluded from formal schools. How could a student’s education and hopes for a better future be over at such as early age?
One year later, in 2010, the three educators collaborated to form EdPowerment, a 501c-3 non-profit. Having encountered the lack of opportunity for these students, EdPowerment’s founding team resolved to provide A WAY BACK (to learning) and A WAY FORWARD (in life) for those abandoned by formal systems.
To accomplish its mission, EdPowerment embarked on a three-pronged strategy:
- A long-term, all-inclusive sponsorship program for more capable and motivated secondary students to re-enter and progress through the formal system
- Development of KIWOCE: an “Open” school and community-based learning center for neglected local teens
- Autism Connects Tanzania (ACT), an advocacy program to help the autistic and otherwise intellectually disabled secure their rightful place in the Tanzanian educational system and society.
Today
Today, EdPowerment has shifted its focus to more remote villages, providing direct educational interventions for even more isolated young people and community members with virtually no exposure to life-changing instruction and information.
- The EDPOWERMENT BUSINESS INCUBATION CENTER in Sanya Ju advances young people and community members through trade skills programs and IT education.
- WCW - WINGS FOR CONFIDENT WOMEN, housed and produced by apprentices in the Center, is an ambitious program, unprecedented locally, to introduce reusable (washable) feminine pads to 5 remote schools. Female students, many from the Maasai community, will benefit in untold ways from these supplies and the accompanying health education that we provide.
- SPONSORSHIPS continue to open doors for capable, motivated students. Today’s focus is secondary school graduates from underserved village government schools, who cannot otherwise pursue or complete college programs for which they have qualified.
- THE EARLY DISCOVERY PROGRAM supplements a group of talented late primary students selected in 2021 with academic and skills coaching. The goal is to give these exceptional village youth a chance to excel through secondary school and achieve National Test scores that unlock higher-education and government loans.
- SECONDARY SCHOOLS ENRICHMENT:
- Study Skills Seminars at two underperforming, underserved government secondary schools to boost the overall student awareness and performance that open paths to further job-oriented education.
- A Saturday Teen Club for life coaching, recreational fun, and exposure through media to other environments, ways of thinking and possibilities.
- Guidance for UWAMA, a local Small Business Women's Group that earns extra income through the sale of liquid and bar soap.
Every initiative opens A WAY FORWARD for individuals with virtually no other access to the knowledge, actions and resources that can offer a better life.
In Memorium: Tom Kway
EdPowerment’s former Operations and Finance Manager died tragically in May 2018. He was our linchpin, handling a multitude of tasks from financial reporting to supervising and mentoring our sponsored students. Tom's vocational degrees prepared him to be our amazing van driver, visiting student families whatever the terrain, informing us of their challenges. However, his motivation took him much further. He learned computer skills (which he shared in the classroom at KIWOCE), financial accounting, and the particulars of the Tanzanian school system. His dependability, smile and kindness made him a source of stability and guidance for our students.
