On Thursday February 1, 2018, we held our annual event in Amsterdam at the HQ of Newzoo, with an update from Jeroen and Ageeth on progress made in 2017 and plans for 2018, as well as some very tasty food prepare by Grace. The day before, on Wednesday January 30, we had our annual event in Belgium, hosted by long term supporter Hugo Levecke.
In December we welcomed an important new sponsor: Globewise, a Dutch NGO with a focus on education. For the coming three years they will support Kamitei. The decision was made after a visit to our schools in Tanzania and a number of meetings with the Kamitei volunteers by Marinel van Zanten en Rosalien van der Laan. This visit was also a good opportunity to go through the latest exam data we collect every year from all schools, allowing us to monitor progress on a subject-by-subject basis for each class level.
Early November a total of 8 students were awarded an Eagle Scholarship and they will start next January at a boarding school in Arusha. This was an important increase compared to previous years, where there were only five scholarships available, and was made possible by the generous contributions from our new Belgian sponsors. Kamitei is formally recognized as a charity in Belgium since 2017. So we made eight families very happy and are confident that they will perform well at Kilimanjaro English Medium School. During the exams, a process that Kamitei manages itself in order to ensure the results are fair. It was also a great opportunity to catch up with community leaders and headteachers, as it coincided with the bi-annual visit of Ageeth.
In November, we had our almost traditional moment of giving tennis balls to the Kamitei students. This included Irkeepusi; one of the schools in a Maasai community. Very happy that we could do this again, thanks to the donation of Pro Te In (Christel ten Have, Tim Luijken and colleagues). We are very proud of Irkeepusi this year, as they improved so much in the past year. Especially Aneth and Rehema who are teaching the students of Standard I. Two teachers for three classes with more than 100 students in total, requiring a lot of patience, energy and good use of teaching aids. The classrooms are nowadays very inspiring!
In 2011 Mary Constantino was offered an Eagle Scholarship by Kamitei. As a student of Kainam she then left Karatu and went to Arusha to attend a boarding school. This year she scored A’s in all subjects in the national exam. She was also the best maths student of her class and the first student in the genius competition exams. What’s more, she was a good adviser to her fellow students. As a result, Kilimanjaro English Medium School offered her a scholarship to Form 4! And visit our Facebook page if you wish to receive more frequent news updates.