“The Book Child”

In the name of my birthright, please do me this justice…

I want to read and write my alphabet of dreams.

The yearning of the Book Child echoes deep in every era.

For every generation’s truth, is the education of its youth.

To stand tall in library queues and read all about life’s hues.

To turn a page without fetter and know the world a bit better.

Because from a reader, comes a leader.

Let us hope –

that the child who tends fields from morn to dusk

be able to smell a book’s sweet musk;

that the child who hasn’t enough money every day

be able to spend their hours in a scholarly way;

that the child who is shut away beyond their control

be proud and present for the class roll;

that the child who feels obstacles sting

be able to hear a school bell ring.

So come, let us help the Book Child in their desire to read.

To learn and to soar in all that they need.

For one day, they’ll leave the [St Jude] school gates with an enormous power to change fates

or to help solve a lifelong mystery

or perhaps even, the chance to write history.

Long live the Book Child!

By Maureen Farah Usman

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We asked Maureen Farah Usman, creator of the heart-warming and touching poem “The Book Child”, a few questions about her poem and her inspirations.

Maureen is a published author, has won several writing competitions and is currently working on a young adult trilogy series, children's picture books, middle-readers, inspirational poems and some animation ideas.

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* Tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m from Australia and work full-time in a Human Resources role which I really enjoy. Writing has been my passion ever since I was a child and I’ve always written poetry in some shape or form. Back in primary school, I remember writing a story and receiving the award for the most creative and imaginative story. I was so chuffed!

I really enjoy writing poetry as it gives you the chance to tell a story with added melody and rhythm. The trick sometimes is to make the poem seem larger than what it really is, or linger far beyond the last line, or perhaps leave the reader wondering or pondering ‘what if’ or ‘what next’. That’s the power of the written word.

* What inspired you to write the poem?

Writing “The Book Child” has been very special to me. People have told me it’s such a beautiful poem, full of emotion and power.

“The Book Child” is an offshoot from an earlier poem I had written a couple of years ago called “The Pen Child”. The theme of that poem is similar in that it is vitally important for a child to be given an education – to be a student of schooling as well as a scholar of life. The idea of “The Book Child” sprouted from this, with a focus on books. Basically, for a child to be provided with their education birthright to help them become a better person and create a better world, to help others and to seek truth in themselves.

It was such an honour to meet Gemma recently and hear all about the wonderful work she and her team are doing at St Jude’s. When Gemma was a guest of the Queensland University of Technology Golden Key Chapter in May 2014, Australia for a fundraising event (Golden Key is an international honour society), I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to commemorate her special visit by presenting a poem about education and literacy, which is what, among other important things, that St Jude stands for.

* What is the main focus of ‘The Book Child?’

The theme of the poem revolves around books; to surpass odds of circumstance and poverty (and hopefully government, structures and systems aid this and make it possible, not abet); for children’s guardians and gatekeepers to ensure they receive an access to education; that education is important for a child’s empowerment, and that access to books is so very special for a child. This is what Gemma’s work stands for and what St Jude strives for. I feel it fits the education theme perfectly and truly defines the message of literacy for children.

St Jude’s Parents’ Committee acts as a voice for parents of our students. It has been running since 2004 and headed by a strong, Tanzanian woman, Bibi Anna. Our Media Relations Officer Steph Fitzpatrick caught up with Bibi Anna to find out more about what the Parents’ Committee does at St Jude’s.

Firstly, can you explain the role of the Parents’ Committee?

The Committee is a vital part of the school and it is why we have 49 parent representatives representing many areas in the Arusha and Meru district. Our role is to hear any complaints, concerns and ideas from the students’ parents, and then present to the management at St Jude’s with a list of issues for them to work on. Each parent representative holds a monthly meeting in their area where parents can ask questions or submit an issue for the school to review. Each student’s family is visited at home throughout the year and we note any welfare issues and to check that their living situation is genuine. If a student has any academic, behavioural or boarding issues, the school works with the parent representative of that area to visit the student’s family and work with them to resolve the situation.

What are the benefits of the Committee?

It is of big benefit because it is just like a bridge between the parents, students and the school. I can say, we are like the messengers for the school, to the parents, because every information or issue which comes in, it comes to the Parent’s Committee and we then pass it on to St Jude’s and work with them on ways to resolve it.

In what ways does the Committee help the students?

We are often going out to the areas where our students live and meet with the families and find out any difficulties that they are having. The Committee also goes and crosschecks a student’s background and if there are welfare issues. The Committee alerts the issue to the Welfare Deputies who look thoroughly into it and they will also refer us to do further investigation. If the students’ families are struggling to buy basic items, St Jude’s supports those students by giving them a pack with oil, sugar, rice, beans, washing and cleaning soap, toothpaste and other essentials. Our priority is making sure that these students are supported and are getting everything they need like the other students.

For background, the Health & Welfare program operates on the foundation of assisting students who require extra needs or those living in extremely difficult situations.

Tell us more about how the Committee is an important component of St Jude’s and how it’s unique compared to other Tanzanian schools.

St Jude’s has a very good system. Even people from outside, when they see us calling meetings in the area, and they say ‘ah why are you doing this?’ and we say we want to update our parents with what is going on at school. It’s a model that is working well.

Joe Hockey has facilitated a special tax concession for donations to the Tanzanian boarding school he visited at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro as an opposition MP in 2009.

Founded by Australian Gemma Sisia, the School of St Jude in Arusha provides a free, private education to 1800 of the region's "exceptionally poor" students, giving them the chance to elevate their families out of intergenerational poverty.

The government's intervention to grant the school deductible gift recipient status will allow the charity to collect donations and write tax receipts year round, rather than funnelling annual donations through Rotary clubs.

Mark Cubit, chairman of the School of St Jude's international board, said it was usually "a very arduous process" for offshore charities to obtain DGR status, saying some applications "can be the size of two Sydney phone books".

"The difference with St Jude is that members of this government have visited the school and seen it with their own eyes," Mr Cubit told The Australian.

"This sort of special listing is probably granted to only three or four charities a year."

The intervention was announced yesterday after a "catch up" between Ms Sisia and Mr Hockey, Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in Canberra on Wednesday.

Ms Sisia, who is on a national speaking tour, said she was "overwhelmed" by the support she had received, including from "Joe and his colleagues that have helped to get us where we are today".

Mr Hockey said: "The Tanzanian-Australian school started with three children in 2002. The school now educates 1800 students, many of whom are boarders, who receive a free education from kindy equivalent to Year 12.

"Only one child per family is entitled to attend school and they must be exceptionally poor to qualify for attendance. These students can go on to university to be doctors, teachers and engineers."

Donations by Australians fund 90 per cent of the school's costs.

Although the school was founded on Christian principles, it selects students only on the basis of their disadvantage. Its student body is about 40 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Lutheran and 20 per cent Muslim, reflecting local demographics.

Selemani is a gently spoken boy who loves maths and wants to be a teacher.

He has just been accepted to The School of St Jude, where he will start in grade Standard 1 in January. He was selected because we saw his academic potential and his family is unable to support his educational needs.

By joining our first primary school grade, Selemani will become part of a large ripple effect The School of St Jude has been creating in Arusha and the whole of Tanzania since 2002.

The ripple starts with a student and extends to the whole community when the school buys classroom materials, food, uniforms and other supplies locally. When we hire local teachers, cleaners, cooks, administrative staff, bus drivers and technicians, the ripple gets wider. The effect is unstoppable.

Selemani lives in a one-room mud house with his mother, father and two older sisters. There are 13 other families living in the same compound. His family buys buckets of water from a nearby tap and they have one light. At night, the entire family shares a mattress.

Selemani’s family owns no animals or land to farm. His father is a casual builder in town, finding work wherever he can, and his mother sits on the side of the road selling dried fish and cassava, a root vegetable. Each month they earn just enough to pay for rent and food. With their combined income amounting to under $3 a day, it is little wonder there is no money left to save or to pay for schoolbooks.

Until now, Selemani’s family has had little opportunity to improve their situation. Now, however, he will receive books, uniforms, medical checks, nutritious meals and a high-quality education that will allow him to go on and become a leader in whatever professional field he chooses in the future.

Over the coming weeks we will be telling you all about the ripples that St Jude’s has been creating.

If you follow this link you will see how simple it is to become a sponsor.

By Gemma Sisia

In the international dialogue about girls’ access to school as a way to end poverty, I see an elephant in the room, namely the lack of quality in public education.

You can send every girl to school and even keep them there for a number of years, but if these institutions are not equipped to teach them well, they are unlikely to achieve a generational leap out of poverty. In Sub-Saharan Africa, with many developing countries now approaching universal primary education, the challenge is how to raise the educational standards.

Whenever people find out I have founded The School of St Jude, a nonprofit school offering a free high quality education to underprivileged students in Tanzania, a common question is, “What’s your policy on gender?”

My answer, to some people’s disappointment, is, “None.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think educating girls is extremely important in the fight against poverty. The World Bank has shown how the exclusion of girls from school leads to a less qualified workforce, inefficient allocation of labor and lost productivity. According to the UNFPA, educated girls tend to marry later, have fewer children, and seek health care for themselves and their children. Organizations such as Tostan show how education programs help girls and women know their rights and fight for them.

At The School of St Jude, girls already make up 57 percent of the student body, and we didn’t need to resort to quotas to achieve that. Besides a genuine financial need, our only selection criterion is academic talent. We have more girls because, in the earliest primary school grades, when we recruit most of our new students, girls develop faster than boys.

But recruitment doesn’t solve all problems. In many public schools in Tanzania, girls have to overcome a number of obstacles in order to maintain a regular attendance.

Unisex toilets, for instance, often without doors, are common. That causes teenagers a lot of embarrassment. Equally vexing is the lack of school buses. The BBC has documented the story of a Tanzanian girl who must walk 7km to school and another 7km to get back home on a daily basis.

The trek to and from school can be a dangerous enterprise. Stories of uniformed teenage girls being abducted and raped are not uncommon. Tanzanian law determines that a girl must be permanently blocked from attending school if she gets pregnant, as reported by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The School of St Jude has eliminated a number of these obstacles. We offer our students reliable school buses, hot meals, boarding rooms, plenty of separate bathroom facilities, and a health and welfare team to support those in need of special attention.

As our girl/boy ratio attests, if you level the playing field, girls will come and stay.

None of that, however, is enough to help girls produce the generational leap out of poverty we expect of them. If we want to give them a minimum chance of making more money and having a more comfortable life than their parents had, we need to provide them with a quality education.

I believe injecting quality in education systems, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the world’s largest challenges today in the fight against poverty.

Tanzania, like other nations, has made big strides towards achieving universal primary education, in order to meet the Millenium Development Goal’s 2015 deadline. But like the majority of countries struggling to improve their public education systems, quantity has not yet been accompanied by quality.

Here, government schools have as many as 200 children per classroom, and no learning resources other than a blackboard and a few shared textbooks. Besides, corporal punishment is used as a disciplining tool. According to UNICEF, “over 50 percent of girls and boys interviewed reported being punched, kicked or whipped by a teacher.”

In contrast, The School of St. Jude offers 1 teacher to a maximum of 30 students, mentors to help with the teachers’ professional development, computer and art rooms, sports fields, well-stacked libraries, science labs, and free textbooks and school materials. Corporal punishment is absolutely prohibited.

We have recently conducted an informal career preference survey with 100 of our 600 secondary students aged 14 to 19 years old.

Among those who took part in the survey, 42 percent of girls and 31 percent of boys want to either start a business or work in business administration; 22 percent of girls and 11 percent of boys want to become doctors; and 27 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls would like to become engineers.

That makes me go back to the beginning and contradict myself: I do have a gender policy. My policy is dual: level the playing field and provide both girls and boys with a quality education.

When a teacher receives a job at St Jude’s it has a big impact on their life.

At St Jude’s teachers are provided with stable employment, amazing resources and a competitive salary. On top of that they receive health insurance, daily nutritious meals and transport to and from work.

All teachers are supported through ongoing professional development through a teacher mentor program. International teacher mentors volunteer their time to help local teachers learn educational techniques from all over the world and ensure they can perfect their English.

With so many extremely under resourced schools in Tanzania and with a high unemployment rate, all of our teachers are aware of the positive impact their job has on their overall life.

A stable job also means that all of our teachers’ families benefit too.

“Many Tanzanian people are poor. There are some families who take their kids to local primary school, they can’t afford it. The salary helped not only me but also my family. I can help my parents and some children also needed my help. There are children out there who sometimes don’t have money to buy their school uniforms or books, I can’t help them that much but I can afford to buy one school uniform. If I was not working here, if I am not working here, it means I could not afford to pay bills,” says Amina, Maths Teacher, Lower Primary.

Listen to our teachers talk about how working at St Jude’s has impacted on their lives.

Teachers play such a vital role in turning our students into future leaders. They do an amazing job working hard to create brilliant minds and successful, well-rounded adults.

“I think that with the education that they have received at St Jude’s, they’re going to stand out in the crowd because they’ve got something that’s different from other children. So, I think by getting the education here it’s going to help the whole community. Not only Arusha, but all over Tanzania,” says Julieth, a St Jude’s teacher.

This is just another part of the ripple effect caused by educating one of the poorest and brightest students in the Arusha region. Please consider starting your own ripple today by sponsoring a student or teacher.