See It: The Community being helped

This madrasa project has been started by AKF, the Aga Khan Foundation, and funded by USAID, and I would like to expand upon it. At this time, there are three main resources centers, in Mombassa, Kenya, with 1,785 students, Kampala, Uganda, with 1,391 students, and Zanzibar, Tanzania, with 1,672 students. Each resource center has at least 26 schools within each country and is constantly training new teachers. This program was created to “mobilize resources to promote effective solutions to problems that impede social development” and to create future leaders for Africa, and it does so by creating early childhood centers to establish a solid educational groundwork for the students. For example, one madrasa graduate has now gone on to college in Kenya and become a doctor, another a lawyer, and another is currently the director of UNICEF South Africa. The madrasa project involves the community members by forming a “school committee” which facilitates the building of the schoolhouse and the appointing of teachers of whom are women in the community.. These motivated women are given training, the only opportunity for career training that they may have, and support to run the schools. It is part of their responsibility to create their own teaching materials from just what is available to them, as they had at Khairat, with film canisters and trash bags. This shows the community that women are as capable as men in leadership, so more and more women feel empowered to act.