East Meru Community School

One of our International Projects, which we are developing over three years, is to work alongside the local Rotary Club of the Usa River by sponsoring two students at the East Meru Community School in Maruvango, Northern Tanzania.

Through this sponsorship, newly recruited pupils from disadvantaged village homes have the opportunity to receive good quality education, which will enable them to have a good start in life.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015) stated that education is the key drive of change and will underpin any progress that is made towards the alleviation of poverty, hunger, poor health, and degradation of the environment and depletion of the world’s resources. EMCS is committed to addressing all these issues. The school ethos is one of helping the community to help themselves.

The school, which began in 2012 has self composting toilets using ash from energy saving wood burning stoves in the kitchen and they harvest rainwater in large tanks from the classrooms. Food is sourced from the school garden or local farmers. Uniforms are provided by a local organisation which works with people suffering from leprosy. The children are taught in English rather than the local language, as all secondary education in the area is in English. All the children attending the school come from disadvantaged families and receive a free education. They are given a healthy breakfast and lunch, as they cannot learn if they are hungry.

Sudbury Rotary Club’s first pupil was a 5 year old boy, who joined the new prep class of 26 pupils. He lives with his grandmother along with two other grandchildren in a very basic home with little furniture, no running water or electricity and cook their meals on an open fire. They have an outside pit latrine toilet. The grandmother grows maize and beans which are the staple food crops of the area. Her only income source is through the sale of coffee beans, which are sold to a local co-operative.

We also sponsor a girl pupil at the school and we receive regular updates from the school on our sponsored pupils.