Haapajärvi High School joins our school network

Haapajärvi High School has become a new partner in our school’s Tanzania network. The meeting between the teachers of Haukipudas and Haapajärvi High Schools was held at the UNESCO ASP schools’ meeting in Jyväskylä this weekend.

The English teacher, Marja Iskanius, has been in charge of the Haapajärvi High School’s projects to Africa since 2002. The first project involved 26 high school students, and it consisted of sending medical equipment to the local hospital, as well as a two-week field trip to the friendship school in Namibia.

This year Marja will be taking a group of 20 students to their two friendship schools, Korongoni School and Machame Girls’ School, in Moshi, North Tanzania. Together with the local charity organizations, Haapajärvi High School has provided their African friends with a school building, electricity, as well as computers, faxes and printers. The students have also been working hard to collect money for their 10-days’ trip to Tanzania for two years now. The departure day, 16th October, is getting close, and the students, together with their teacher, are very busy with their final preparations for the trip.

The projects in Haapajärvi are excellent examples of a successful co-operation between Finnish and Tanzanian high schools, and serve as the best possible model for Haukipudas High School which is looking for new ways to get students more involved in its project in Tanzania.

This websight will serve as the first contact forum for our schools’ network. Students from Haapajärvi High School are welcome to join our earlier discussions on the UN Millenium Goals, as well as the Tanzania project of Haukipudas High School. We are looking forward to reading your opinions and comments, and hope our friends in Medina High School in Ohio will join us, and get to know the students in Haapajärvi, too.

On the 9th December, The national day of Tanzania, Haukipudas High School has a special program in which the English teacher Marja Iskanius together with her "Tanzania group", will come and tell our school about the different phases of their project, as well as all the exciting and memorable experiences they had on their trip in Africa.

More information about the project and the trip on: http://edu.haapajarvi.fi/lukio/tansania/

By Tiina Mustakangas

A Tanzanian IT-expert joins our school network

Mr. Elikana Ngogo, a Tanzanian information technology specialist currently living and working in Finland, has joined our school network and is eager to assist Haukipudas High School with our efforts to send used computers to our friendship school in Tanzania. Mr. Ngogo is one of the founders of the association called “Computerized Society”, the goal of which is to collect used computers from different parts of the world, and send them to young students in Tanzania, Africa. Mr Ngogo's goal is to make Tanzanian students literate users of information and communication technologies, but as Tanzania depends on imported IT-technology, they have to turn to countries which are advanced in their production and application of technology. The majority of Tanzanian schools also depend on second hand technology as new equipment is too expensive to afford. (//es.joensuu.fi/pub/Theses/2008_MSc_Ngogo_Elikana_Obadia.pdf)

Mr. Ngogo found out about our school’s Tanzania project accidentally through our website last spring. He contacted us right away, and we set up a meeting for the summer. In our meeting we decided to work hard together for our common goal to find available used computers, to organize their shipping, and finally to provide our friendship school with computers and the necessary expertise that is needed in order to be able to use the computers efficiently. Our goal is to send the computers to Mkapa High School during the school year 2008-2009.

Mr. Ngogo will visit our friendship school in Dar-es-Salaam in November. He will also contact the local Rotary Club which, together with the Rotary Club in Finland, might be able to help us with our project.

By Tiina Mustakangas