Recent Highlights
Samwel Kimaro, our sponsored student for 8 years, just received one of those heart-stopping emails: He passed the rigorous exams required to become a lawyer in Tanzania (referred to locally as an advocate). His reaction, “Now the future gives me hope!”
Graduation photos and more about Samwel to come. For now, know that with EdPowerment at his side, this young man overcame untold deprivation and obstacles from birth. In 2017, his older sister, Vainess, a sponsored student herself (now a married nurse with her own family), intervened for Samwel during one of our summer camps, asking us to take him on. The rest is his-story: a remarkable one of resilience, a dogged work ethic, resourcefulness, and faith.
Bringing ICT to Villagers
EdPowerment’s Business Incubation Center has welcomed its first learners to its new Computer Training and Services program. They represent diverse students and community members, who can now perform the very basics – how to keyboard, email, and access the worldwide web – to more advanced tasks such as how to research jobs and markets, and complete applications for a variety of purposes.
As word spreads through the nearby villages, the Center, with internet capability not found elsewhere in this area, will become a hub of activity through which locals can use the technologies of the modern world to prosper at home. There is no limit to the individual impacts of this program.
No Excuses: Pads = Participation
WCW (Wings for Confident Women), EdPowerment’s reusable/washable feminine pad program, now operates in 5 secondary and primary schools – some of which serve Maasai communities. In these societies, girls can have little or no knowledge of their own bodies, much less how to take care of themselves during their periods. Our health education and coordinated distribution of menstrual pads and supplies, means that these adolescents and teens no longer have to be embarrassed at school or worse, stay home.
Unaware, uninformed or misinformed girls are more easily trapped into early marriages, pregnancies and other tragic outcomes. Our sessions afford these students an open, confidential and supportive environment to share personal stories and receive care not offered elsewhere. We thereby open their minds to making better choices, inspiring the courage needed to self-advocate.
Finding a way to self-reliance
Today, hopes are coming true for the Incubation Center’s first cohort of apprentices in 2024 – all young adults formerly languishing at home, now earning money and moving forward.
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Agrey, Mechaki and Joel, carpentry apprentices, now work at VIP Classic Furniture, a large supplier in the area.
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Lilian’s participation in the cookery/English programs became a
springboard to join the Institute of Tourism in Arusha.
- Glady, another cookery apprentice, is now a waitress in a hotel
in the Tanga region.
- Sarah, part of the WCW reusable pad program, now works as a tailor in Arusha, while two others are paid at the Center to produce pads while a new group is trained.