Background Story
As of July 2020, the Kasumulu Primary School has today 1048 students, including 136 toddlers. They have 10 classrooms, 1 headmaster’s office and 2 staffrooms for their 12 teachers. This means that on average we do have 105 pupils in each classroom. Hop4Kids believes that the number per classroom does significantly impact on the teaching quality!
Cocoa for Schools has helped Kasumulu Primary School to complete a new building with 2 classrooms in February 2018 and partnered with the school to renovate the other 4 buildings with 8 classrooms as well. By March 2019, their whole campus was beautifully renovated.
Hop4Kids and Cocoa for Schools planned on building another 8 extra classrooms so that Cocoa for Schools and Hop4Kids could bring the number of students per classroom close to 50. That would have a dramatic impact on the quality of education with the experience of building a classroom for the students.
However, a large part of these students has to walk 1 to 1.5 hours in the morning to school and need the same time to get home in the evening every day. When we celebrated the renovation of the buildings the management told us the district was considering a new primary school closer to those remote areas.
Strategic Plan
Based on the provenance of the students, this new school will hold about 500 students, almost all coming from Kasumulu Primary school. That would nearly half the population at that school and will bring the level of kids per classroom to more decent levels.
What do we want to build in Bujesi?
- 2 buildings, every 4 classrooms. Budget for construction materials: 35 million TZS/building, totaling 70 million ($30,386.20 USD). Budget for labor: 12 million TZS/building, totaling 24 million TZS ($10,418.12 USD).
- 1 building with a headmaster office, a staff room (12 teachers are budgeted by the government), and a library/future computer classroom/storage. Budget for construction materials: 22 million TZS ($9,549.95 USD), labor: 8 million TZS ($3,472,71 USD).
- Toilets (10 for girls/10 for boys/2 teacher toilets): Budget for construction materials: 20 million ($8,681.77 USD), budget for labor: 3 million ($1,302.27 USD).
- Deep-water borehole with pump infrastructure: 20 million TZS ($8,681.77 USD) for drilling, pump, etc. No labor.
- Cocoa for Schools and Hop4Kids will supply the technical support and construction materials and the villagers will provide for the labor in kind (volunteers) or in money to pay the workers they want to hire in or a mixture of both.
- Cocoa for schools and Hop4Kids will take care of the material, totaling an estimated 132 million TZS ($57,299.68 USD). We are aiming to have the school in service on the 1st of January 2021.
Demography
People live in the village at Bujesi with an average income of less than 1 US$/day, who eat once a day! The Covid-19 has completely halted tourism, the most important source of income. Cocoa for Schools does not see if there will be some money available from the villagers, and we have concluded that if we want to succeed, we need some outside help.
We are happy to announce that Hop4Kids and Cocoa for Schools decide to pre-finance with what is available in funding, but we still need your help.
We need your help!
Hop4Kids and Cocoa for Schools are striving to improve the quality of education for over 1000 kids (Kasumulu and Bujesi together). That’s $10-15/kid, which we believe it is a bargain! If you would like to be part of the projects, any donations will be appreciated.
If the COVID-19 situation improves, Hop4Kids hopes to be able to keep “handover” ceremonies shortly. All the donors are always very welcome to participate at their own cost.