The School of St Jude celebrates 10 year milestone with Australian Tour!
Announcement posted by Red Letter Management 14 Feb 2012
The school, founded by Australian AM recipient Gemma Sisia, is celebrating a decade of fighting poverty through education in Tanzania, East Africa.
Kim Saville, the Deputy Director of St Jude’s, will tour Australia in March and April to visit the school’s loyal supporters and share with them the extraordinary journey over the past 10 years.
Kim, a Sydney-sider with a penchant for laksa, reruns of Ab Fab and the theatre, arrived in Tanzania in early 2002 with a suitcase, a pair of willing hands and a ‘can do’ attitude to assist with building a little school in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha.
On her arrival, Kim discovered a school with just two buildings, nine students, one teacher, one small bus, one handyman and one old offline computer that worked intermittently … like the water and electricity supply.
Ten years on, Kim is now responsible for over 400 staff and the education of over 1,500 of the country’s brightest students from the country’s poorest areas. Across three large campuses,there are now almost 200 teachers, a fleet of 21 buses, a huge team of handymen and over 400 online computers for staff and students … and guaranteed water and power thanks to donations of water tanks and large generators.
“Every year for the past decade we have recruited around 150 new students into the school. These students are selected from over 10,000 children who apply each year and are put through a rigorous selection process that tests them academically and ensures they come from very poor and disadvantaged backgrounds,” Kim says.
“Although education ostensibly is free for primary school students in Tanzania, uniforms, books and sometimes desks and chairs must be paid for, thereby hindering or denying the very poor access to this ‘free’ education.
“St Jude’s has rescued these potentially great assets to the Tanzanian workforce from ending up in the poverty cycle into which they were born and a life of hard manual labour, menial jobs or life on the streets,” Kim says.
The school totally relies on the generosity of sponsors and donors for funding – there is no local government support. The majority of sponsors and donors come from Australia but increasingly supporters are joining from around the world as the news of this great success story in Africa spreads through word of mouth around the globe.
Over 1,500 visitors called in for short or long stays last year and many, armed with their Lonely Planet guide recommending a visit to St Jude’s, came from Europe and North America.
“The school not only helps students and local staff at the school, it also has a huge ripple effect on the whole community as we acquire goods and services from many local tradespeople and businesses. All the school’s building materials, school books, uniforms, furniture, fittings, food and maintenance supplies are bought locally,” says Kim.
It’s these achievements that have caught the attention of the President of Tanzania, President Kikwete, and the current Australian High Commissioner for East Africa, who visited the school at the end of last year.
Congratulations for the 10 year milestone have been pouring in from supporters and well-wishers around the world including businesswoman Therese Rein and politician Joe Hockey who visited the school.
With the first round of St Jude’s graduates due in 2015, the future is full of exciting challenges for the school named after the patron saint of hopeless causes.
“We want to complete the building program so that we have a fully functioning and top quality institution capable of educating over 1,800 students at any one time. To ensure sustainability, our western volunteers are mentoring local staff throughout the academic and non-academic departments.
“Financially, we want to be able to assist our students reach their full potential – advancing to tertiary institutions, getting the jobs of their choice and impacting the workforce with hearts and minds that have been encouraged to aim for perfection in all they do and be ethically and professionally strong,” says Saville.
The tour commences in Melbourne on March 2nd 2012 and concludes on 10th April.
For full tour information please visit: www.schoolofstjude.co.tz or email australia@schoolofstjude.org.
Kim is available for media interviews throughout the month on request.