Motto primary school is situated in a remote corner of the Dodoma region in Tanzania. The school serves students from the two isolated villages of Motto and Gungi, with a total of 694 students, which includes a total of 297 girls and 397 boys. This school mainly focuses on teaching environmental conservation and climate-smart agriculture to their students. These areas of education are not normally part of the Tanzanian curriculum. The school highlights the values of “self-reliance” placing a focus on the importance of one’s own power and resources.
Motto primary school owns a farm of roughly 10 acres beside the school. Where they grow crops such as onions, carrots, tomatoes, cabbages, groundnuts and sweet potatoes. The school also has a small tree farm to supply fruit, shade and timber. Having a supply of vegetables and timber from the trees helps provide a constant source of income for the school which allows them to maintain classroom supplies and the framework of the school, when government budgets are insufficient or unpredictable and they also support families who cannot afford school supplies or uniforms for their children.
The vegetables are also used to supply the students with daily meals which provides the essential micronutrients in a region where child malnutrition is widespread. A study in 2017 showed that 45% of children under the age of five are unable to reach the average height or weight for their age, which is over the national and regional average of 34.4% and 36.5%. This shows that children are not receiving the right amount of food for their age. The children are also not able to access clean water or enough water to stay hydrated.
The school’s suffers from frequent droughts and water shortages, so they identified the need for a reliable water supply system. With funding of €xxxx from ElectricAid, a borehole and solar powered pump was set up to provide access to clean water for the school.
Key opbectives:
- Purchase, transport and installation of an elevated water tank at Motto primary school
- Purchase and install a pipe network from the village water storage tank to the school garden water tank.
- Purchase and install a network of drip irrigation pipe lines and gate valves in the school garden. These will be connected to water storage tank and will provide irrigation to three acres of cultivated garden.
- Capacity building of students, teachers, parents and the school management committee on horticulture farming techniques, drip irrigation, water management and environmental protection.
Beneficiaries:
Motto primary school was selected for this project due to the high rates of malnutrition in the community, the schools role as a focal point for agricultural extension workers for the wider community and the newly installed borehole means that a drip irrigation system would be possible to install and have all year round access to water.
30 students, teachers and parents were selected for learning about horticultural farming techniques, drip irrigation skills, water management and environmental protection. The students will be selected by those who showed the greatest interest in learning about horticulture, due to low amounts of teachers in the school all teachers will participate, parents will be selected by those who showed interest and those who participated in the school garden.
This project also benefits the student’s families through the availability of vegetables, as well as the new horticultural and irrigation skills that they had learned which they can bring back to their own farms which leads to a bigger supply of vegetables for the community.
This project also helped with reducing the rates of malnutrition and increased availability of nutritionally balanced meals for students at school.
This project had a duration of three months from September 2019 to November 2019 and delivered against 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals #1 No Poverty, #2 Zero Hunger, #3 Good Health & Wellbeing, #4 Quality Education #6 Clean Water & Sanitation and #13 Climate Action.
Although the direct beneficiaries of this project were the 694 pupils attending Motto primary school and the student’s families, the student population of the school has increased up to 778 pupils.
The community of Motto village and other stakeholders thank ElectricAid and it’s generous supporters for their tireless effort towards supporting the community through World Vision.
electricaid.ie 