Mtopepo Community School Visit
By christineam • Apr 29th, 2009 • Category: Featured blog postOur second school visit took us to the Mtopepo community. This school was started in 1995 and currently serves 1200 local secondary students. The school is a community initiative and receives little government support. The challenges the school community faces are immense including shortage of teachers, facilities, classroom materials, lack of a library and any labs, funding and water. We visited classrooms where there were 135 students to one or sometimes two teachers. We met with the school management committee who articulated their needs to us in Swahili and English. The challenges are great but the vision to empower a community to establish, manage and own sustainable schools is a beacon of hope.
Mtopepo community school
Monique, Robert and Nadine speak with students
Classroom setting
This collaborative initiative between the IB and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) was a first step in working together to foster intercultural understanding. The selected cultural activities and visits deepened and challenged IB teachers’ knowledge of the Zanzibari Muslim contexts, including areas such as education, art, music, history, sociology, linguistics, environment, economic, agriculture and maritime culture. Each cultural experience provoked discussion and reflection which resurfaced in the unit planning activities. The impact of this immersion into the local culture–including as seen on some of these pictures, visits to a community school and to an AKDN-supported early childhood ‘madrasa’ and training centre– did a lot to help teachers understand the power of community involvement and empowerment to create sustainable change.
Absolutely and in the words of one of our participants “I was especialy moved by the personal dignity and integrity of the communities who were changing their worlds.”
The challenges are great indeed, but what a great challenge to take on!