Sisi Pamoja is Swahili and means ‘we collaborate’.
This association has a few chosen educational projects on the island of Pemba which lies off the coast of Tanzania. It has existed for ten years. The chairperson Helen Paul has lived and worked for several years on Pemba and its neighbour Zanzibar and still has close contacts to the ministries and is relatively familiar with the culture and the needs of the people there. Our motto is also well-known in Tanzania ‘Elimu ni Ufunguo wa maisha’ – education is the key to life. So our work concentrates on educational projects. Sustainable education.
We support a nursery school ‘Star Nursery’ which lies in the centre of the main town on Pemba, Chake Chake, since the beginning. We have a sponsorship project for orphans and children from one parent families who attend the nursery as they usually have great financial difficulties. We have recently financed the building of new toilets, gates and a large water tank and electric pump as the water supply to the town is extremely sporadic. We also help with materials and hope to support the extension of the school as the number of students has increased rapidly as a result of the high quality of the teaching.
Schools are only as good as the teachers and their teaching. So we had trained English teachers for pre-primary for 6 years and then decided on an English trainer training programme which we have carried out for the last 5 years in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. We are proud of our trainers and have now involved the local advisors in the programme.
A further project is on an isolated small island which can only be reached by using a dugout canoe. We work in cooperation with another locally based association called Community Forests Pemba. We are trying to raise environmental awareness and carried out a mangrove planting competition for the students. The island lives from fishing and over-fishing is a great threat to their livelihoods. The youngsters, however, go fishing rather than going to the school on the island. Also in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education we support a class set up by the ministry for truants by paying a salary for the voluntary teachers as well as uniforms for the students – which are compulsory in Tanzania. There are around 25 students in the class, the majority of whom are male. We are continuing the mangrove project as well as garden project to grow vegetables to sell.
We also work closely with the Gymnasium am Sonnenberg in Crivitz and have had a successful exchange visits to and from the school in Msuka in north Pemba. The Diesterweg Schule in Hagenow also has a partner school on another small island Mako’ongwe in Pemba with our support.
The other branch of our work is intercultural awareness for students here in Mecklenburg and over the past 10 or more years we have carried out over 100 project days in different kinds of schools form nursery schools, schools for children with special needs to grammar schools as well as with teachers and adults. We always welcome new challenges.
Sisi Pamoja – Gemeinsam mit Pemba Island e.V.
Kontaktperson: Helen Paul
helenpaul@hotmail.de
www.sisi-pamoja.de
Sisi Pamoja is Swahili and means ‘we collaborate’.
This association has a few chosen educational projects on the island of Pemba which lies off the coast of Tanzania. It has existed for ten years. The chairperson Helen Paul has lived and worked for several years on Pemba and its neighbour Zanzibar and still has close contacts to the ministries and is relatively familiar with the culture and the needs of the people there. Our motto is also well-known in Tanzania ‘Elimu ni Ufunguo wa maisha’ – education is the key to life. So our work concentrates on educational projects. Sustainable education.
We support a nursery school ‘Star Nursery’ which lies in the centre of the main town on Pemba, Chake Chake, since the beginning. We have a sponsorship project for orphans and children from one parent families who attend the nursery as they usually have great financial difficulties. We have recently financed the building of new toilets, gates and a large water tank and electric pump as the water supply to the town is extremely sporadic. We also help with materials and hope to support the extension of the school as the number of students has increased rapidly as a result of the high quality of the teaching.
Schools are only as good as the teachers and their teaching. So we had trained English teachers for pre-primary for 6 years and then decided on an English trainer training programme which we have carried out for the last 5 years in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. We are proud of our trainers and have now involved the local advisors in the programme.
A further project is on an isolated small island which can only be reached by using a dugout canoe. We work in cooperation with another locally based association called Community Forests Pemba. We are trying to raise environmental awareness and carried out a mangrove planting competition for the students. The island lives from fishing and over-fishing is a great threat to their livelihoods. The youngsters, however, go fishing rather than going to the school on the island. Also in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education we support a class set up by the ministry for truants by paying a salary for the voluntary teachers as well as uniforms for the students – which are compulsory in Tanzania. There are around 25 students in the class, the majority of whom are male. We are continuing the mangrove project as well as garden project to grow vegetables to sell.
We also work closely with the Gymnasium am Sonnenberg in Crivitz and have had a successful exchange visits to and from the school in Msuka in north Pemba. The Diesterweg Schule in Hagenow also has a partner school on another small island Mako’ongwe in Pemba with our support.
The other branch of our work is intercultural awareness for students here in Mecklenburg and over the past 10 or more years we have carried out over 100 project days in different kinds of schools form nursery schools, schools for children with special needs to grammar schools as well as with teachers and adults. We always welcome new challenges.
Sisi Pamoja – Gemeinsam mit Pemba Island e.V.
Kontaktperson: Helen Paul
helenpaul@hotmail.de
www.sisi-pamoja.de