The School of St Jude and Africa Dream Safaris are working together to help impoverished children in Tanzania to receive a free, high-quality education, while strengthening ADS’ humanitarian involvement in the East African community. Our monthly donation will buy 2,000 hot, nutritious meals per month for the students. Tanzania is a developing country where one-third of its population lives below the poverty line, on less than $1.25 per day. A majority of children in Tanzanian schools do not receive lunch or any food, so they cannot focus on learning when they’re hungry. St Jude’s provides daily meals for students, as well as breakfast and dinner for the over 1,100 students who live in their boarding houses. All produce is sourced from the local community.

Below is the story about a student named Eva from the School of St Jude. (Provided by SSJ)

Six years ago, young Eva’s face beamed from the cover of the autobiography of our school founder Gemma Sisia, titled ‘St Jude’s.’ Eva was a young girl who was still realizing her dreams. She epitomized the happy, bright eyed child at St Jude’s who is overjoyed about getting a free, high quality education. Now she has grown and is developing into a well-adjusted young adult. She is in Form 1 and has big aspirations, with a world of possibilities in front of her. This is her story.

Eva started at St Jude’s in 2006, when the school was just four years old and we had just over 600 students and around 115 staff. Eva’s family includes her father, John, mother, Penina and younger brothers Richard and Benjamin. They live in a two-room brick home and like many other Tanzanian dwellings, the home has no plumbing (water is collected from a neighborhood tap for a small monthly fee) and meals are prepared over a charcoal or basic kerosene-fueled stove.

To support the family, Eva’s father finds work where he can as a carpenter and a mason. Her mother works at their home as a tailor. They are big supporters of Eva’s education and encourage her to continue learning in the hope that one day she will have qualifications and a successful career so she can break the cycle of poverty for herself, help them and her community.

Eva showed promise as a capable student at a young age. As a child, she would often ask her parents to send her to a school which would enable her to learn English. “I wanted to learn English because I knew in this world of today that I needed it and I strived to get a high quality education as I wanted to have a bright future,” she said.

She grew up playing with her younger brother and their games would regularly revolve around learning. “There was one game where we liked to draw and the first one to finish was the winner. The aim of it was that you drew things, like an egg and you also wrote the name of it in English. So, I always liked to play games where I could learn new words.”
Before St Jude’s, Eva attended a government school where nearly all of her subjects were in Swahili. It was a limited learning environment where Eva felt she was not able to reach her full potential. She remembers hearing about St Jude’s at her old school and then soon applied. It was a turning point in her life.

After passing the relevant checks, she was accepted and began a new chapter of her life. “When I found out I was going to St Jude’s, I thought it was amazing and I was very happy. It meant a lot to me,” said Eva. Since then she has fulfilled a number of milestones. She successfully completed her seven years of primary schooling, has begun high school and has impressively scored A’s in almost all of her subjects. She also boards at the school’s Smith campus which is preparing her to be a strong, independent individual.

Eva’s life has been transformed because of her education. She has sponsors in Australia and is acutely aware that their support has enabled her to have clean uniforms, a place to board, fresh, nutritional food, committed teachers and access to state-of-the-art ICT laboratories and well-stocked libraries.

Research supports the assertion that sponsorship can make a huge difference in a child’s life. Bruce Wydick, an economist from the University of San Francisco carried out a study in six countries over three continents, including in Uganda and Kenya. He and his team studied more than 10-thousand individuals who had been sponsored in the 1980s. The overall result was that student sponsorship works and that 50 to 80 per cent are more likely to complete a university education.

“By sponsoring a child at St Jude’s you will change the life of that child, their family, their community and contribute to changing their country. The evidence says it works, the economics says it works and if you visit the school you can see for yourself that it works. What better way is there of using your money?” said St Jude’s School Director John Ford.
Eva, the little girl that once shyly took her first steps through the St Jude’s gates seven years ago, has grown into a happy, confident young adult. She is like any other teenager who enjoys spending time with her friends and playing card games. In a few years, Eva plans to head to university to study engineering and work in Tanzania. Like the young girl on the cover of St Jude’s, she is optimistic, loving life, has the world at her feet and ready to embrace it.

The School of St Jude started in 2002 with just three students in the Moshono area of Arusha, Northern Tanzania. How, then, did it grow to become one of Africa’s best and largest educational institutions of its kind, providing a free quality education to the poorest children in the region?

Any way you look at it, parent involvement from the get-go is part of the answer.
Most of St Jude’s parents have had limited education and some can feel uncomfortable in a school environment. But that never kept them from recognizing the value of a good education.

Meet Catherine, mother of St Jude’s student Augustino, who is in Standard 2, the equivalent of second grade in the U.S. They rent one room in a crowded compound with other families. The residents share a toilet, wash room and water tap. The women and children collect water for cooking, drinking, washing and cleaning from the nearby tap, for a small per-bucket fee. There’s no internal plumbing or electricity.

She and her husband are currently raising five children, four of their own and one child by a cousin of hers. Catherine’s husband farms his plot of land in Babati, a three-hour journey from Arusha. That is the family’s main source of income. He grows maize and beans, and is usually away for days in a row during harvesting season. Catherine complements the family’s income by cooking a fish and peanut dish to sell in town. Having enough food for her children and herself while their father is away keeps her awake at night. She must come up with a plan each day for where her family’s next meal will come from.

Despite all the adversities, Catherine makes sure Augustino is fed and washed each morning when the St Jude’s bus comes around to pick him up for school. Every afternoon she clears a space in the house to make sure he does his homework. As Augustino progresses along his education, he will be in a position to help his siblings in their studies.

He spends most of his day at St Jude’s. Classes start at 8:30 am, and the bus takes him home at 3 pm. He has regular Tanzanian elementary school classes, such as reading, writing and math, plus an enhanced curriculum including arts, computers and sports.

He also has a number of extra-curricular activities and breaks between classes, a time when he can socialize with his friends, play on the school’s grounds and enjoy life.

Catherine considers herself lucky. She feels her family has been blessed because one of her children attends The School of St Jude, where he not only eats two meals every day, but gets a better education than many children attending private schools in the region.

“I’ve seen a lot of difference since Augustino started studying at St Jude’s,” says Catherine. “He’s smarter, more polite and hardworking.”

Good job, Catherine! Your son is thriving at St Jude’s thanks also to your support and encouragement.

ADS is a proud sponsor of The School of St. Jude. This photo essay outlines a day in the life of a St. Jude Boarder. We hope that you’ll help us spread the news about this charity-funded school that provides a free, high-quality primary and secondary education to the poorest and brightest children of Tanzania. Asante Sana!

Every morning of the week, Peter and his classmates walk in single file along the dirt track from the boarding campus to the school. The path runs alongside fields of maize and banana trees, where women bent at the hip tend to their crops. It goes past dust covered houses, where children in worn clothing peep out from the doorways. Further along, the path passes the water tap, where people from all around the village go to fill their empty buckets, which they balance gracefully on their heads on the way home.

At the gates of the school the dirt road gives way to a paved driveway and rendered two-story buildings filled with classrooms and covered in flowering vines.

There is a large open-air dining hall where the students are served morning tea and hot meals for lunch everyday.

Beside that are grassy football fields and brightly coloured swing sets. This is not a typical Tanzanian school. One of the many reasons The School of St. Jude is so unique is that it is funded entirely by donations from generous sponsors, allowing over 1600 students to be educated there for free.

Government schools in Tanzania also provide free education, but unlike The School of St. Jude their classrooms are often overcrowded and lack basic materials for learning such as textbooks and stationary. In many government schools the students are not provided with meals, so those students who do not have food of their own to bring are forced to learn on an empty stomach. As well as this, the teachers are often under-qualified and still make use of the cane for punishment.

So it is unsurprising that every year hundreds of students flock at the gates of St. Jude’s for selection. The sheer number of applicants means that the process of selection must be rigorous. Firstly, the applicants sit several rounds of testing. Those that achieve the highest results in the testing are then visited in their homes in order to ensure that the students that are taken into the school are not only the brightest in the area, but also the poorest.

Peter is one such student. He started school at St. Jude’s in 2008 and this year he and his classmates began their first year of boarding. They live in the boarding campus nearby the school from Monday to Friday and go home to their families every weekend.

When they reach secondary school they will move into the secondary boarding campus where they will live fulltime during the term and go home only during holidays.

The advantage of the boarding facilities is that the students are ensured breakfast, lunch and dinner and they have every opportunity to focus on their studies.

Peter’s family is his mother, father and two younger brothers. They live in a house consisting of three small rooms made of mud and wood, lined on the inside with cardboard and with a single electric light in each. The first room, adorned with pictures of Christ and Bob Marley, has only just enough room for a couch and a small table where they cook and eat meals. The second room is where Peter’s parents sleep, their worldly possessions are stacked in the little space there is around their bed and their clothes hang from the ceiling.

The last room is where Peter and both of his brothers sleep together in a single bed. Washing is done outside in buckets that they fill with water from a tap that is a few metres from their house. On the weekends when Peter goes home he tutors his brothers who attend a local government school, helps his parents with chores, reads and plays with his neighbours.

We must be careful when we talk of poverty and wealth, for they come in many forms. Peter is a part of a family and community on whom he can rely on for love, support and friendship, and in this regard he is extremely wealthy. However, in terms of standards of living, healthcare and opportunity for quality education and employment, Peter and his family are lacking. This is true for many other Tanzanians and is the reason that The School of St. Jude was set up with the mission of fighting poverty through education.

An Australian woman named Gemma Sisia started the school a little over 10 years ago on a block of land that was donated to her by her father in-law. It started with a single classroom, 3 students and 1 teacher. Through the tremendous amount of support that Gemma received, the school has grown at a remarkable rate. It is now Africa’s largest charity-funded school and has libraries, computers, buses, playing fields and boarding facilities.

The school not only gives education to over 1600 students but also provides employment to over 400 local Tanzanians who are hired as teachers, cleaners, cooks, gardeners, bus drivers, and administration and maintenance staff. All food, learning materials, building materials and anything else that is bought for the school is bought locally and therefore gives a huge amount of income to local businesses. As well as local staff, there are over 40 international volunteers who work in the business office, maintenance and as teacher mentors.

For Peter and all of the students at The School of St. Jude, the opportunity to receive a quality education means an opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge to become what they aspire to be. Peter aspires to be a doctor. Each of his classmates have their own aspirations too; to become teachers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, tour guides, musicians, football players, and even prime ministers. Consequentially, this opportunity to become what they aspire to be, also becomes an opportunity to raise themselves and their families out of poverty, giving themselves, their community and their country a brighter future.

by Rachel McLaren