NGO plans to establish new school for herders’ children
A young boy herds livestock. A non-governmental organisation is drumming up support to establish a school for herders’ children in Arusha Region. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- “Education is the foundation of better life and a prime mandate of our organisation so we begin our activities with a school,” said Mr Leboi Ole Timbau, the executive director of Esarunoto Emaa Foundation.
- He told The Citizen at the weekend that a 50 acre land had been secured at Losirwa village on the outskirts of Mto-wa-Mbu town for the construction of a school through the support of donors and other well-wishers.
Arusha. In order to empower the nomadic pastoralist communities with skills for development, a non-governmental organisation is drumming up support to establish a school for the herders’ children.
“Education is the foundation of better life and a prime mandate of our organisation so we begin our activities with a school,” said Mr Leboi Ole Timbau, the executive director of Esarunoto Emaa Foundation.
He told The Citizen at the weekend that a 50 acre land had been secured at Losirwa village on the outskirts of Mto-wa-Mbu town for the construction of a school through the support of donors and other well-wishers.
The proposed education centre will have a nursery, primary and secondary school climaxing in Form Six and will target children from the nomadic communities where education has been despised in the past.
He said the focus of his organisation was to assist the marginalised communities through education because it was lack of it that some communities lagged behind. According to Mr Ole Timbau, fund raising for the ambitious project would soon start in the United States where some donors and charitable organisations have expressed willingness to support the venture.
He said Esarunoto Emaa Foundation, an entity which was registered as an NGO just recently, was running a nursery school at Mto-wa-Mbu for 45 children from the surrounding communities.
A meeting with the donors is scheduled to take place in September or October this year during which the budget for the project would be approved and a contractor picked for the job, he said.
“We are an NGO formed specifically to address the education needs of our society. We have to take our children to school and equally train our women on entrepreneurship,” he explained.
Other focal areas will be elimination of female genital mutilation (FGM), various aspects of entrepreneurship, including artwork making bee keeping projects and modern animal husbandry.
“We are a non-profit organisation working to provide education for children, women and elders in the Maasai community.
“At the same time, we aim to maintain educational roots within the context of the traditional Maasai culture while exposing the students and their families to the global community,” he said.
