Talented breakdancer and soon-to-be senior student Dorcas may yearn to hit the dance floor during school holidays, but instead she has decided to give up the last three months to help others.
“I like working, keeping myself busy and doing stuff that helps people,” she said, explaining why she signed up for St Jude’s annual Form 4 volunteering program.
“I was happy with any position because I really just wanted to do it.”
More than 15 volunteer roles in various departments were available from December to February, with Dorcas landing a spot in the Sponsor Relations team at our primary campus.
“I’ve learnt lots of skills like working with lots of different people,” she said, explaining that her role included helping students with their sponsor communications and organising photos.”
When she’s not volunteering at school or helping her mum, a single parent of four, Dorcas is getting her groove on at Via Via Café, a dance venue in Arusha.
“I like doing hip hop and I’m good at girls’ hip hop, which we call ‘chicky pop’, but I like breakdancing the most,” she said, explaining that most of the moves require power and balance.
“But I’m really busy now so I don’t have much time to train… Practice starts at 5pm, but when I get home I have to wash my clothes, do cleaning, fetch some water, help mum cook, and then time is up – no time for practice.
“I’ve got some mates from school who dance and we would practice every free time we would get – after school and on weekends and public holidays.”
Dorcas’ past few months have proven her appreciation for both the past 11 years of a free, high-quality education at St Jude’s, and the encouragement her supportive mother has given her.
“It’s been great having Docas with us the past few months,” Sponsor Relations’ long-serving employee and Dorcas’ mentor, Lucy Cole, said.
“She’s always ready to help, no matter what the task is, always gets it done, and is simply a nice person to have around.”
Dorcas will start her final two years of school later this year and after she graduates she plans on doing community service through Beyond St Jude’s before going to university, possibly to study medicine.
If you’d like to support a breakdancing, volunteering future doctor like Dorcas, find out about our sponsorship programs.
FORM Six graduate Suleiman remembers the moment when he had to step up and become a leader in the visitors’ team.
The aspiring doctor chose to spend this year in our Visitors’ team through the Beyond St Jude’s community service program, developing his skills and helping the supporters who made his free education possible.
“When I started, I had to do mostly paperwork, then (Visitors Coordinator) Bernadetta put me in charge of a tour group and I will always treasure that responsibility,” Suleiman said.
“I did the itinerary, prepared the room, booked trips, and when they came I took them to an orphanage and I just found myself crying as I helped heating milk and changing diapers.”
An orphan himself, Suleiman was determined to showcase ‘the real Arusha’ to his charge of visitors.
The next day he took his guests to Plaster House, which offers pre and post-operative care to children undergoing corrective surgeries, and TanzHandz which provides education and employment opportunities to people with disabilities.
“That day was intensely emotional; one of the girls in the group started to say something and then she fainted in my hands. As I was taking her to the doctor, next door, two more girls fainted.”
As group leader, Suleiman took it upon himself to comfort the young women.
“I said to the whole group, you should be thankful for what you have seen, you should be happy. There are so many out there who do not have these chances and maybe they are even more desperate,” he said.
“Then I said, when you go back to Australia, you should not take anything for granted and always live a life mindful of those who have less.”
Enock is Suleiman’s best friend. All of our 2015 graduates placed in the top 10% of Tanzania in their national exams, and Enock finished right alongside Suleiman, at the top of the top. He also interns in our Visitors center.
“We like it so much,” Enock said. “We meet all these different visitors, we sit together with them and they are smiling and that is really nice, and it’s a very regular feeling for us.
“By the end of a visit you always end up treating a visitor more like family than a friend and when they are leaving you feel it, you know.”
Enock was one of the very first students to be accepted at St Jude’s and, like Suleiman, he has had a steep learning curve this year, literally – in the course of his internship he has summited Mt Kilimanjaro!
Enock was assistant coordinator on a Kili climb and personally took it upon himself to make sure every participant summited.
Both interns discuss ‘growing out of responsibility’ and how, in hindsight, they have learnt and matured a lot.
Responsibilities don’t end when they leave the office, though. Both Sule and Enock taught in government schools after graduating Form 4, and they continue to tutor every night after work.
“We teach in the afternoons, evenings and weekends now, kids from different government schools in our neighborhood, so even though we are here in the Visitors' center in the day, we also get to teach,” Suleiman said.
Fifty of our inaugural graduates chose to participate in the Community Service Program, some like Suleiman and Enock are interning at St Jude’s, and the bulk are teaching approximately 10,000 students across 18 government schools. All together, our graduates log over 2000 volunteer hours a week.
“One of the things I enjoy most in my life is meeting new people, so community service, like the word itself, community, I love!” Enock said, when asked to reflect on this year and if he would change anything.
“And my time working in the visitor’s center, I loved, I still love.”
If you want to share a smile and become part of Suleiman and Enock’s family before they head off to university, start planning a visit to St Jude’s today – We Love Visitors.
When The School of St Jude was just a twinkle in Gemma Sisia’s eye, it was her local Rotary members who helped fundraise and eventually build our first classrooms.
Rotary’s motto of ‘service above self,’ must have stuck in the brickwork, because in March, St Jude’s students will officially launch Rotary branches of their own.
The Interact and Rotaract clubs of St Jude will be run by secondary students between the ages of 12-18 and 18-30 respectively.Both clubs will be coordinated by St Jude’s sponsor Seb Cox, a 21-year-old education student and Rotaractor from Canberra.
“Gemma has always had the floating idea of starting Rotary clubs here as the organisation has helped the school so much – she just needed a person willing to come over and do it,” Seb said.
Seb gauged student interest in Rotary by holding a special assembly at our secondary campus, designed to introduce students to the organisation’s mission and achievements.
Prominent local Rotarians Revocatus, St Jude’s secondary Second and Academic Master, and Anna Rweyemam, Arusha Mt Meru Rotary club president, gave inspiring presentations during the assembly and motivated over 250 students to vie for the 80 Interact and 60 Rotaract positions available.
Successful applicants were invited to stand for leadership positions within the clubs.
Rotary rules require clubs to carry out two service projects a year: one that helps their school or community and one that promotes international understanding. New clubs must also be sponsored by existing Rotary branches.
Julieth in Form 5 was the only female to stand for the position of Rotaract President – and she won! She was also one of the 10 lucky students invited to attend a meeting of the Usa River Rotary Club, which will co-sponsor the St Jude’s clubs with the Rotary Club of Arusha Mt Meru.
In her stump speech for club president, Julieth discussed partnering with Usa River on rain water harvesting projects as well as her motivation for joining Rotaract. “I wanted to be part of Rotaract because it would be selfish of me not to give back with what I have learned and been given at St Jude,” she said.
"Although I might not be rich enough to feed the hungry population – I believe there are skills I have, there are jobs I can do, there are stories I can share with my community to make it a better place and I believe Rotary will allow me to do this.”
After the elections, club members attended weekend training camps where they looked at Rotary projects from all over the world before honing in on possible service projects using Rotary’s procedure for identifying areas of need within Rotary’s areas of focus.
Presidents of our generous sponsor clubs will meet with President Julieth and her Interact counterpart, Lisa (also the only girl who ran) later this week to officially sign off and launch both clubs.
Stay tuned to learn more about the projects our Interactors and Rotaractors will engage in or talk to your local Rotary club about helping St Jude’s.
An 80-strong audience of our senior primary students began their year with a funky lesson in a different kind of music.
French artists visited St Jude’s to share the art of beatboxing and emceeing, much to the delight of eager St Jude’s students.
The professional beatboxer and an MC, invited from France by the Alliance Française of Arusha (with support from the French Embassy to Tanzania), spent the special afternoon sharing their “universal language” skills with the students, much to everyone’s delight.
“We’ve been to a few local schools with this workshop and it’s been very popular,” Alliance Française Arusha director Alicia Thouy said.
“It’s a fun and rewarding way for students to collaborate and learn something different.”
Grinning and giggling students were obviously impressed with the group bonding exercise, with their confidence built to the point that a few demonstrated their own talents.
The workshop was an ideal chance for St Jude’s to add another dimension to the diverse and thorough education our students experience, as well as connecting with a fellow highly regarded organization in Arusha.
Support our holistic education and help create confident, community-focused leaders by donating today.
Asha is afraid of nothing, how many 10 year olds can say that?
Her favourite subject is science because her teacher, Mr Samwel Jackson, “is so smart funny and nice,” she says. Asha likes learning about animals, especially lions, and how lions like to kill and eat zebras.
Asha’s favourite person in the world is her mum, Nuiya.
Nuiya raises Asha and her cousin, Ramadhani, on the money she makes from washing clothes and sewing jumpers to sell at local shops. St Jude's also assists Asha’s family by providing home packs that include essentials like soap, beans and cooking oil.
Asha and Nuiya have just returned from Mwanza, the second biggest city in Tanzania, where they spent the school holidays with Asha’s grandmother, who taught her how to cook ugali.
Asha is a quick study and in 2015 achieved almost straight A’s across her subjects.
This year Asha has started Standard 3 (Year 3) and is excited to be back at school. “I like St Jude’s and I am very happy to come back because I am coming to read lots of books,” she said.
She is also excited to see her best friend Mary.
Asha and Mary like to play the slide game at lunchtime and are near inseparable.
When Asha grows up she wants to be a “doctor for children” and so does Mary.
In Tanzania there are only 3 doctors per 100,000, people, one of the lowest per capita rates in the world.
If you would like to be part of amazing Asha’s aspirations and correspond with her about the feeding practices of lions, or how to cook ugali, then why not sponsor her today?
Overcoming vision impairment in a developing country is no easy task, especially when you’re trying to focus on your education, but two of our students have done just that.
Primary school student Sebastian and secondary student Selemani are both severely vision impaired due to albinism, but a group of generous Australians are helping them focus on their education.
The Brisbane-based group have worked together to provide specialised equipment for both students, so they can access the curriculum like their normal-sighted peers.
Selemani said he had tried various solutions during his schooling, including a prescription monocular (an optical instrument for use with one eye) and glasses, but without success.
Simply mentioning his new set-up brought a huge smile to his face.
“I have struggled to read the blackboard since I was in Standard 1 (Grade 1). I used to wear spectacles but they didn’t help much, so I still needed to go close to the board,” the soon to be 18-year-old said.
“Now with the iPad, I can see! It has a camera that takes a photo of the blackboard, and I copy it in my iPad. It’s so easy to read, and I can zoom in and out!”
When Brisbane High-Rise Rotarians visited St Jude’s last year, Selemani volunteered to show them around campus. Vision Australia physiotherapist Louise Arvier was amongst them, and she realised how Selemani’s life might be drastically improved with equipment that’s difficult to come by and afford in East Africa.
The Rotarians arranged to provide Selemani, Sebastian, and another St Jude’s student with cerebral palsy, an iPad with specific software each to facilitate their learning.
At almost nine years old Sebastian already suffers from similar difficulties to Selemani, and the equipment is already making a difference.
“Sebastian has been at the school for two years now, and seeing the progress in his performance over the past few months (with his new equipment) is amazing,” St Jude’s Community Relations Officer Charlotte Peyrat-Vaganay said.
Mrs Arvier said two of the iPads were donated, and the Rotarians fund-raised to purchase one specifically for Sebastian, as he needed the latest version to support the up-to-date software.
She and her husband, fellow Brisbane High-Rise Rotarian Dr John Arvier, personally provided the Sony Camera lens’ to attach to the iPads of both students.
“It not only allows them to take pictures of the board but of handouts and anything they find difficult to access,” Mrs Arvier said.
With the addition of iPad cases, keyboards, several styluses and the appropriate Apps through iTunes, donated by the couple, Selemani and Sebastian can both access the curriculum like their sighted peers.
The excitement and cheer Sebastian and Selemani have been radiating makes the joy they feel about the group’s generosity obvious.
Their increased self-confidence, self-esteem and independence is already showing, with Selemani competing in a public speaking competition late last year.
