September Progress Report

We’re continuing to move forward in preparing to build and operate Twegashe School! Here are some highlights from our latest newsletter.

School Design

Back in May we had a changing of the guard on our design team. We’re grateful to the volunteers from NAC for setting us off on the right path, and we continue to miss their enthusiastic presence. Our friend Marc Oplinger, a senior project manager at Gensler, has stepped in to lead the design process. Through the G-Serve program at his firm, Marc recruited two other volunteers, Erin Osberg and Ellen Crawford, to help with the architectural drawings. Marc was also able to enlist the help of three engineers at Swenson Say Faget structural engineering—Zane Kanyer, Kevin Winner, and Aaron Lieberman—to review the designs and ensure they are structurally sound. In mid-August we sent a draft set of drawings produced by this team to an architect in Tanzania. He reviewed the drawings for compliance with Tanzanian standards and made suggestions for a few small changes. Our design team is now incorporating those changes into a final set of plans which we will submit as part of our application for a building permit. Many thanks to Marc and his team for contributing their time and talent to this project!

September Trip to Tanzania

In mid-September we’ll be traveling to Tanzania to spend three weeks in the village preparing for construction. Our construction supervisor, Bill Suhr, will be traveling with us again, as will our project manager, Mike Tully. One major goal for this trip is to construct an access road to the school site and to begin some site leveling. We’ve lined up a group of village laborers to help us with both of these tasks. We’ll also be meeting with the Tanzanian architect, staking out precise locations for the school buildings and teacher’s houses, interviewing contractors, sourcing and pricing construction materials, and testing the soil on our plot to determine what mix of sand, cement and gravel we need to add to make the compressed stabilized soil blocks that we intend to use as our building material. In addition to all of this will be the inevitable visits to government offices as we work our way through all the required hoops. It’s an ambitious agenda for a three-week visit—we’re prepared to be exhausted by the time we get back home!

Water Supply Update

Our efforts to secure a water supply for Twegashe School are moving forward. Because St. Photini’s Well Project—the group who have offered to drill our borehole—does not have the equipment to do preliminary hydrologic testing, we were advised to contract with engineers at the local government water department. They have tested the site and found that water is definitely available on the upper part of the plot, where we’ve been hoping to position the borehole so the water is easily accessible to villagers. We’re waiting for the engineers’ final testing report to determine the exact placement of the borehole. St. Photini’s plan is to drill and install a well casing sometime this fall, and we’ll have a solar pump installed just before we begin construction.

Curriculum Design

Although we’ve been especially focused on school design and construction, we’ve also made a good start planning the curriculum for Twegashe School. We’ve gathered a committee that includes three of our board members—Michael Banobi, for his perspective on education in Tanzania; Jeannette Banobi, a former ESL teacher; and Steve Burdick, a retired elementary school teacher. Also on the committee are Keela Williams, who has had years of experience teaching at and directing Montessori Schools, and Seina Landstrom, a former middle-school science teacher. We’ve begun to study the Tanzanian government kindergarten curriculum, deciding on the best order for introducing skills and concepts, looking for areas where we should provide enrichment, and brainstorming possible learning activities. We were thrilled to learn that Keela has a treasure trove of learning materials from her Montessori school that she’s been saving for just this sort of opportunity. We’re planning to travel light on clothes in September and fill our bags with things like counting squares, beads, sandpaper letters, picture books, puzzles, and kids’ dress-up clothes instead!

Fundraising

We’ve been making progress with fundraising, too. Thanks to your generosity we’ve already raised $157,000, which is more than half of what we estimate we’ll need to build the entire first phase of Twegashe School and almost a third of our Making Lives Meaningful campaign goal of $500,000. Your interest and support inspire us every day to keep working toward the vision we all share of a better future for children in rural Tanzania.

Thank you for being such an important part of our team!

Asante sana!

Michael Banobi
CORE Tanzania Board President