EdUKaid (www.edukaid.com) is a charity supported by Clyde & Co’s Tanzanian office. EdUKaid has enhanced the lives of more than 14,000 children to date. Their activities include primary school development/renovation, pre-primary education, inclusive education and child sponsorship.
EdUKaid operates in the remote Mtwara region of southern Tanzania, and aims to improve access to education for some of the country’s most disadvantaged children through simple and cost effective interventions.
EdUKaid has been able to achieve some very impressive and tangible results over the past 15 years:
Academic results at their partner schools have increased by 60%.
School attendance has improved by 200%.
16 primary schools have been fully renovated and 15 pre-primary classrooms have been constructed.
More than 1,000 desks and 10,000 textbooks have been provided.
14,000 children have received a significantly improved education.
Clyde & Co sent a team of 16 volunteers (6 from the UAE offices and 10 from the Dar es Salaam office) for a week from 18th – 23rdAugust 2019 to the village of Mkwajuni in Southern Tanzania. Mkwajuni is in one of Tanzania's least developed regions. It is 45 minutes' drive from the nearest paved road and approximately 600 kilometres from Clydes’ office in the country's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. The Clydes team each paid for their own trip expenses and our Foundation donated funds towards the cost of the materials needed for the work being done, for classroom resources and for a clean water project.
Their task was to assist with improving the school environment at one of EdUKaid's partner schools, and included getting involved with classroom construction, classroom painting/decoration, repairing furniture, making learning resources and building handwashing facilities. They helped put the finishing touches to the complete refurbishment of the Mkwajuni village primary school. The investment by EdUKaid included concrete floors for all of the classrooms (replacing the mud/dirt floors), proper toilet facilities and desks, doors and windows for all the buildings.
The team’s work included:
Painting the outside of various classrooms (more challenging than it looks!);
Building low cost hygienic hand-washing facilities – known as “tippy-taps" (see photo);
Decorating the inside of classrooms (including a beautiful mural - see photo);
Constructing a shelter for pre-primary classes (previously held under a tree) (see photo of construction in progress); and
Making educational resources.