Sinai primary school

Kids squeeze into classroom that doubes as a store room

This school, 5km north of Babati is another primary school desperately in need of help. Each of the 8 classrooms is in need of assistance, some are used as store rooms, one has a termite mound growing up through the floor. The kindergarten which has up to 50 kids has only 6 desks. Three classrooms have to squeeze in over 100 students. Imagine what kind of education those children will get.

Lack of space leads to poor learning environment, high levels of absenteeism and low teacher moral.

There are no teachers houses and the teachers have to walk 5km each way each day.

The toilets are shockingly bad

We are delighed to welcome Karen, John and the team from the Woodland Hill Montessori School, NYN state who have started to work with us at the Sinai School. Click here to see the flier that they used to annouce the visit of Clive to their school. The team are due out on November 2008 to see what needs to be done and meet with the officials and move the project forwards. We are very excitied to have them on side.

http://www.woodlandhill.org

now the team have set up http://waterpowerpeace.org/ a new website aimed at the water project. 

The Woodland Hill Montessori School is currently using some unique playground equipment that pumps water and generates electricity at the same time. This equipment, designed by Sabre Technical services is ready to be exported to the Sinai Primary School, Babati, Tanzania where the nearest water supply is1km away. The students of Woodland Hill Montessori have been learning just what that means by collecting water from the same distance each day. When you need it for the toilet, for cooking, cleaning and drinking, that is a lot of water to carry.

The school needs more than just water and plans are being developed between all three parties to help reduce class sizes from over 100 students in some classes; provide kindergarten facilities, build teachers houses and improve the health of the students and the community.

Please click HERE for  copy of the marketing poster for the April 22nd 2009 Fund raiser

Every parent knows kids seem to have an endless supply of energy so imagine you could turn all of that energy into a power source. Believe it or not one school in upstate New York is doing just that using students resets activity to pump water and generate electricity for lights. Talk about child power.

It looks like  recess as usual. But it Woodland Hills Montessori school even play time is a learning experience. And the merry go round turns a smaller diameter circle underneath and that creates electrical energy. This playground has solar panels to harness the sun's energy. And the merry go round and the gyros spinners are hooked up to coordinator which turns his energy into usable power. I think now it's a lot of fun. At woodland hills it's enough to light the basketball court at night and to pump water from the fountain and water tower and out to the garden.

The kinetic energy of the kids it's captured but what's unique about this design is it's stored in a battery and were able to use the energy both from the sun.

It's a prototype for a system that will be built at Sinai primary school in the body Tanzania. There playtime will bring running water and electricity for the eight classrooms schools right now they have no power and the nearest water source is a kilometer away. The students at woodland hills are learning about clean energy and water scarcity and life in Tanzania and one teacher says combining the lessons really drives it home for the kids."

You can teach someone about simple machines and you can teach you about solar energy. But it's not until you connected to something you really feel strongly about that they really pay attention and and understand it.

The students say it's a great way to learn and finding the energy and generate power is no problem as the kids have so much.

Laura Ingle Fox News.

See the FOX Report with Shepard Smith

See the Capital News 9 news coverage

The REPORT DEC 08was submitted for initial consideration by LTT for Sabre and the Woodland Hill School. It outlines the initial assessment of the school and contextualises it within the country and proposes a route forward.

This report needs to be carefully considered and budgeted and discussed with the community before any action can be started.

Even the longest safaris starts with a first step this report is about the direction we might take to alleviate poverty through education.

Haley and Juma

In July 09, a team of five 13 year old students, their parents teachers and John and Karen (14 in total) came back to Babati to start the renovation work at the Sinai Primary School. With funds the kids at the Montessori school had raised they managed to renovate all 7 classrooms, build a new kitchen with a fuel efficient stove, in a week. It was great to see everyone work so hard, and the American kids played with the Babati kids as though they had been friends for ages, it was great to see that language makes no difference when it comes to play time.

another highlight of the trip was to see their water pump borehole completed, this is the first stage of the water project that will bring drinking water and allow some of the school land to be used as a farm and hopefully develop a small forest for firewood trees and a fruit orchard. The hand pump is connected in August and then the real work begins.

This is a great article in a New York House Magasine.

http://www.newyorkhousemagazine.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Playing+For+Power%20&id=3042647-Playing+For+Power&instance=home_feature