Thursday, November 3, 2011

Pictures of Jangwani Secondary School in Dar es Salaam




School motto
















Needlework room






Muslim students






Headmistress





Garden



Form four 2011



Fish pond





Computer lab









Assembly ground

Monday, May 30, 2011

ASSISTING JANGWANI GIRL SCHOOL CONTINUES

In two previous years our students worked to get finances to assist our partner school in Dar es Salaam. Through UNESCO we have already donated money for hard disks. This spring we made a deposit for them to get an Internet connection at their school. Hopefully they are able to use the money soon and the students at Jangwani will have easy access to the web when they start the next term.

There is still some of the money left. Therefore we were able to help the school some more. We purchased the school a digital camera, as they requested. Our friend Elikana Ngogo will take it to them this June as he travels to Tanzania. Next on their list is a video camera. Perhaps we can take it to them by ourselves when we travel with our group of Haukipudas students to Tanzania in 2012!

The students and staff of Haukipudas also kept on assisting student Fatuma Msechu at Jangwani. We hope she is now able to pay her school fees and will prosper. We wish you well, Fatuma!

by AMO


LEARNING ABOUT TANZANIA

This school year our group of students planning to travel to Tanzania in 2012 has kept up the theme of Africa and UNESCO. These 23 students have made informative morning announcements not only in our school but also in our neighbouring school, Haukiputaan yläkoulu (a junior high school). They prepared posters that still hang on the walls giving other students a glimpse of Africa and Tanzania. Some students gave oral presentations in their other courses and here are summaries of them in English:

Tanzania

Tanzania’s capital is Dodoma and it’s located in East-Africa. Tanzania’s area is 947 300 km2. Population is 40 213 162 and climate is tropic and there are plenty of animals.


Tanzania’s two biggest national parks are Kilimanjaro and Serengeti. Kilimanjaro National Park is located around Africa's highest mountain. There live many mammals which are endangered. Serengeti national park, which is Tanzania’s largest park, is known for mammal packs wandering. It is the most notable nature conservation area.


There are a lot of forests in Tanzania. About 43 %, forest is felled yearly for fields and pasture area. Near lakes and coast climate is tropic and middle plain is dry and hot. Highlands and mountain is a little bit cool.

- by Eveliina Satomaa

Tanzania

Tanzania is located in southern Africa. Surface – area of Tanzania is 947 300 km ², and population about 40 million. Tanzania also has a total of 21 protected areas including 14 national parks. There are also seven UNESCO World Heritage sites. Dodoma is the capital of Republic of Tanzania, and official languages are English and Swahili.


National Parks

One of the most famous Tanzanian National Parks is Serengeti, which is a large highland area while it is also the oldest national park in the area. Serengeti’s surface area is about 30 000 km ², and most of the area is savannah, but there is also a forest. Serengeti’s fauna is quite wide: there live more than 2 million herbivores, like gazelles and zebras, but as well as thousands of predators. There is organized for example hot-air balloon safaris, and basic safaris on foot. There are also a lot of other national parks in Tanzania, for example Arusha, Ngorongoro, Gombe, Katavi, Tarangire and Ruaha.

Agriculture

The majority of Tanzania's population is employed by agriculture. Most of the Tanzanian agriculture is located in northern Tanzania and Tanzania's western coast. The most common agricultural products are bananas, cassava, rice and corn. Coffee is also produced quite a lot. Especially Mount Meru’s fertile area is excellent for farming of coffee.


Zanzibar and Pemba Island’s climate is humid and warm, and that kind of climate is excellent for farming coconuts and aromatic plants. In Tanzania women form the majority of the workforce in agriculture. Tanzanians produce for export mostly coffee, tea, cashew nuts, cigarettes, cotton, sisal and a wide range of different spices.


Farms in Tanzania are usually relatively small (about 1-3 hectares). People there normally use hoes, but sometimes also tractors and oxen.

Erosion

Erosion is a result of landslides. Erosion is visible mostly in mountain areas, for example Mount Kilimanjaro’s one high is very worn and leveled. Rainfall and landslides are contributing of erosion.

Deforestation

About 43 % of Tanzania's surface is a forest, and that’s about 39 million hectares. Forests in Tanzania are destroyed annually, approximately 90 000 hectares. Forests disappear because of deforestation and cutting firewood. However there are also protected areas in Tanzania, like national parks, where harvesting is not allowed.

-by Eeva Savilaakso

Christianity in Africa

Africa is an important part of Christianity, because about 20 percent of Christians live in Africa. African Christianity is developing fastest compared to other Christian parts of the world. There is tens of thousands of churches in Africa, which have their own interpretation of the Bible. They also have their own attitude to Christian values. Christian teachings have widely mixed with local beliefs, and also the local customs and culture give a nuance to African Christianity.


Christianity arrived in Africa already in the first century. Nowadays almost half of Africans are Christians, so Christianity is widespread in Africa. In the early days Christianity focused on North Africa, but as a result of the rapid spread of Islam Christians became a minority. After that spreading, Christianity focused on southern Africa. Southern Africa became a spreading area of different Christian churches.


African worship can be very lively and free-form and the local music and art can be strongly present. Some African churches have maintained local customs and have invented religious meanings for them. African biblical interpretation is much different from western biblical interpretation.


Christianity is spreading strongly in Africa and the African role in the Christian world is growing all the time. However, missionaries have still much to do in this big continent.

- by Eetu Väänänen

Education in Tanzania

In 1970 Tanzania had free education for all students. Being a young state meant troubles in the economy, and school fees were enabled from 1984 until 2001. After the school fees were dropped in 2001, primary school enrolment has increased rapidly as well as pre-primary and secondary education has also expanded steadily in the last few years. The increasing number of students resulted to more needs in space, teachers and studying equipment.


Even though Tanzania has shown positive growth in education, there are still difficulties in achieving universal primary education. Such things as education quality and the passing rate for primary school students who reach the final level bring challenges. Disability, orphanage and child labor are also additional worries.


As the number of school-aged children grows, the quality of teaching fails to do so. The number of children enrolled does not match the supply of qualified teachers or educational materials. Many of the schools in Tanzania are not healthy or safe environments especially for young girls.


The number of girls and boys in primary school is almost the same. Unfortunately girls make up only 35 per cent of the children who make it through secondary school. By the age of 14 approximately half of Tanzania´s children have left school. Only one third of the children go on to attending secondary school and less than 1 per cent go on to enrolling in institutions of higher education.


Dar es Salam University is the oldest and biggest university in the country. It was founded in 1970 and the number of students enrolled in the years 2007-2008 was about 5800. Women made up about one third of the students.


Sources:

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tansania#Koulutus

http://www.unicef.org/about/execboard/files/TANZANIA_CCPD_2011-2015_final.pdf

- by Jenni Posio

Health in Tanzania

The under-five mortality rate in Tanzania in 2006 was 118 out of 1,000. Life expectancy at birth in 2006 was 50 years. The 15–60 year old adult mortality rate in 2006 was 518 out of 1,000 males and 493 out of 1,000 females. The leading cause of death in children is malaria. For adults, it is HIV/AIDS. The treatment coverage for people with advanced HIV infection in 2006 was 14 percent. Other leading causes of death in under 5-year-olds is pneumococcal disease (pneumonia) and rotavirus diarrhea). Health care in Tanzania is poor. 118 in 1000 children die before the age of five.


HIV/AIDS in Tanzania

Among the 1.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, 70.5 percent are 25 to 49 years old, and 15 percent are 15-24 years. In ages 15-24, women have a higher prevalence rate than men in the same age group. The greatest challenge facing the health sector is to deliver quality health services to the Tanzanian population. Since the 1990s, structural adjustment policies and HIV/AIDS have greatly reduced the health-sector workforce. A second challenge is poverty, important because the cost of drugs and health services is a financial barrier.

- by Marko Moilanen

Friday, May 6, 2011

Piloting for the "Global Citizen in Finland" Project

Guest lecturers Ms Kristina Ragan, Mr. Raymond Boniface and English teacher Tiina Mustakangas

Haukipudas High School is one of the 16 high schools in Finland which work for the ”Global Citizen in Finland” project funded by the Finnish Board of Education.The aim of Haukipudas High School is to bring international university students to foreign language, psychology, history and philosophy lessons to talk about global issues, such as identity, multiculturalism, cultural differences, racism, voluntary work, human rights, distribution of wealth, UN Millennium development goals, nature, sustainable development, and peace and conflict prevention.

In February 2011, we had the pleasure of having Ms Kristina Ragan from the USA and Mr. Raymond Boniface from Tanzania in four of our English lessons. In those lessons we learned a lot about the African and American culture as well as the cultural differences between Tanzania, the USA and Finland. Our guest lecturers Kristina and Raymond didn’t have to go home empty handed either, as our students introduced them to our Finnish culture and made excellent presentations about Finnish peculiarities, attractions, nature, climate, food and sauna.

In April and May 2011, Kristina came back for two other visits. This time she gave a lecture about the distribution of wealth and the UN Millennium Development Goals. These topics touched all of us, and made us think how lucky and privileged we are compared to many other nations in the world. Since the target year of 2015 for the UN Millennium Goals is getting closer, our students gave reports on seven of the goals. Enclosed the very thorough reports on where we stand with the goals right now, as well as pictures of our hardworking and beautiful students.

The UN Millennium Goals 1 and 2 Reports

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger -
Where do we stand now?

The report was presented by Julius Pyrhönen, Eva Saranpää, Milla Kotisaari, Annukka Tallgren, Veera Karjalainen, Anu Ylisaukko-oja and Kaisa Ojala.
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Goal 2: To ensure primary schooling for all children - Where do we stand now?
The report was presented by Sami Aspelund, Toni Heikkinen, Miika Moilanen and Ola Länsman

To achieve the second goal by the deadline set by UN, all children at official entry age for primary schooling would have had to be attending classes by 2009. Instead of this, the enrolment rate for primary school is only 89% for the developing countries. This means that there are still 69 million children not going to school in 2008. About half of these children are in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, progress has been made since 2000, when the enrolment rate was still 83%. How did we get this far?

School fees were abolished in many countries e.g. Ghana and Ethiopia. This increased the enrolment rate hugely. Also investing in teaching infrastructure and hiring and educating more teachers has helped to achieve the millennium goal.

The biggest problems in achieving 100% enrolment rate are children dropping out from school before reaching the final grade and lack of teachers. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 30 percent of primary school students drop out before reaching a final grade. The lack of teachers and infrastructure is also most notable in sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN Millennium Goal 4 Report

The Report was presented by Elina Puranen,
Henna Ståhle and Teemu Peteri

The UN Millennium Goal 5 Report

The report was presented by Liinu Koivisto, Charlotta Lohilahti and Laura Lalli

Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health - Where do we stand?
• Maternal mortality remains unacceptably high.
• New information shows signs of progress in improving the health of women during pregnancy and childbirth. -> In some countries, maternal mortality rations have significantly declined
• We are still far from achieving the MDG target of reducing the maternal mortality ration by three quarters by 2015.
-> We need 5.5 per cent annual decline to meet the goal.
• Funding is vital to meet the goal, yet both official and external funding have declined sharply. -> There is now less money available than there was in 2000.
• Progress has been made in…
- sub-Saharan Africa: some countries have maternal mortality levels between 1990 and 2008.
- Asia and Northern Africa have made even greater improvements.
• Antenatal care and skilled assistance during delivery are being offered to more women.
-> Progress is being made in all regions.
-> In North Africa, more and more women are seeing skilled health worker at least once during their pregnancy (% gone up by 70 per cent).
-> In Asia: increases of almost 50%.
-> In 2008, health workers attended 63 % of births in the developing world (in 1990, the percentage was 53%).
-> Most dramatic progress in Northern Africa and South-Eastern Asia (increases of 74 per cent and 63 per cent).
• Still, large disparities exist.
-> Poor women in remote areas are most likely to remain without adequate care.
-> Especially true for areas where there are only a small number of skilled health workers and maternal mortality is high (sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia, Oceania).
-> HIV is also slowing the progress.
• Contraceptive use has increased over the last decade.
-> by 2007, 62 per cent of women (married or in union) were using some form of contraceptive.
* Increases lower than in the 1990s.
• Providing contraception to all in need could cut maternal mortality by almost a third.
- Widening access to maternal health services in Egypt: construction of maternal homes in rural areas, trained healthcare workers attending births.
- Fighting fistula in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States: launching the Campaign to End Fistula, a childbirth injury that leaves women incontinent, isolated and ashamed.
• Investing in mobile maternal health units in Pakistan: UNFPA-supported mobile clinics were set up in 2005.
-> Nearly 850,000 patients by 2008.

The UN Millennium Goal 6 Report

Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other diseases - Where do we stand now?
The report was presented by Tuomo Holma, Paula Koivukangas, Aaro Littow and Joonas Mäenpää

HIV and AIDS
— The number of HIV infections dropped from 3,5m (in 1996) to 2,7m (in 2008).
— Deaths from AIDS related illnesses dropped from 2,2m (in 2004) to 2,0m (in 2008).
— New epidemic stabilized in most regions. New HIV infections are still on the rise in Eastern EU and Central Asia.
— Antiretrovial treatment has expanded, but HIV infenction rates outpaces it.
— In 2003 only 400 000 people were receiving treatment, in 2009 over 5m people were on treatment.
— E.g. in 2008 alone over 60 000 babies were prevented, because their HIV positive mothers received treatment.
— The UN children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNAIDS have helped countries to scale up programs for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
— In Burkina Faso, the UN Development Program (UNDP) is supporting regularly nearly 36,000 people living with HIV.
— Food, home visits, etc.
— A handbook on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights has been developed.
— UNESCO leads the Global Initiative on Education and HIV/AIDS.
— Assists countries in education systems --> address the effects of the pandemic on their education systems.
Malaria
— In 2008 there were 243m cases of malaria causing 863 000 deaths, 89 per cent of them in Africa.
— Increased funding has helped the control of malaria.
— Production of mosquito nets rose from 30m to 150m between 2004 and 2009.
— Funding for malaria control was $1,5 billion in 2009 – far from estimated $6 billion needed in 2010 alone to meet the MDG target.
Tuberculosis
— Remains the second leading killer after HIV.
— Prevalence is falling in most regions, expect Asia.
— 11m people suffered from Tuberculosis in 2008.
— Number of new cases fell from 143 to 139 per 100,000 people between 2004 and 2008.
— If this continues, the MDG goal will have been achieved since 2004.
— National Tuberculosis Control Program provided treatment for 11m people and saved more than 2m lives.
— Between 1990 and 2008 the prevalence of tuberculosis diminished by 44 per cent.
Summary
— HIV/AIDS treatment access goal:
There is still a huge amount of people living with HIV/AIDS without access to treatment.
— HIV/AIDS halting and reversing goal:
In 2008 there were 2.7 million new HIV infections.
— Malaria and other diseases halting/reversing goal: In 2008 there were 243 cases of malaria, a lot of more funding needed to achieve the goal.

Monday, March 14, 2011

A LETTER FROM A TANZANIAN STUDENT


My name is Fatuma Msechu, a disabled student from Jangwani Girls Secondary School.

Aid from Haukipudas Secondary School has made my life very comfortable here at school.

I had paid for my school fees, bought some stationery for academic purpose and obtained my personal needs. Also your money has made me getting the bus fare for going home during holidays and coming back to school.

Financially I am very poor. I can’t even afford getting my basic needs; some times I have been asking help from the headmistress and Mr. BOSCO who have been very kind to me now and then.

I had no idea when Mr. BOSCO advised me to look for the financial Aid from people whom I don’t know and I have never met before but Mr. BOSCO is a very good man. He made all his personal effort to find me sponsors and finally he gave me the good news that Madam Anja from Haukipudas Secondary School in Finland has agreed to work for my problem finding me sponsorship from her school. I was very happy though it was just like a day dream to me till I got the money Euro 273 from your school. That is the day when my dream became true.

You have really made me to be sure that now I can finish my form IV studies this year as I cleared all the debts by paying the school fees and other necessary contributions for all previous three years. Thus I am kindly asking you to help me again for only this final year of my studies so that I can complete my studies in October this year.

Mr. BOSCO told me that you are coming next year. I really welcome you all to our country and I am expecting to meet you here at school as I am sure I might come back for further studies at this school.

Yours,

Fatuma

OFFICIAL REPORT FROM TANZANIA

A BRIEF REPORT ON FINANCIAL AID FROM HAUKIPUDAS SECONDARY SCHOOL FINLAND

Introduction:
This report presents a brief review and appraisal on the progress of the relationship between Jangwani Secondary school in Tanzania and Haukipudas Secondary school in Finland. Jangwani secondary school is among the members of the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network in the country; coordinated by UNESCO National Commission of The United Republic of Tanzania.

Through Jangwani Secondary School’s membership, the UNESCO National Commission managed to link and establish strong friendship ties between Jangwani and Haukipudas secondary schools. Under this mutual relationship, Jangwani secondary school has managed to receive a total of Euro 1073 from its sister school (HAUKIPUDAS) which was sent through UNESCO National Commission Office. The amount is for financial and technical support to the school. The money was used as follows:

Expenditure:
The money under review was spent as follows:

Euro 800/= equals to Tshs.1, 388,990/96 for buying Hard Disks. The school managed to buy 20 pieces of IDE 40 GB Hard Disks from RAAM COMPUTERS LTD for Tshs.1,100,000/= and installed them in the school computers. The installation cost was Tshs.200, 000/=. Euro 273/= equals Tshs.455,277/68 was Financial support to the form three Disabled student Fatuma Msechu for payment of school fees, Transport (on holidays) and pocket money.

Outcome:
All the installed computers are currently working and are in access to both students and staff members as per school schedule. Furthermore, Fatuma Msechu, the disabled student is in form four this year and is expected to complete her ordinary level studies in November, 2011. She greatly enjoys the financial support and has expressed her appreciation.

In general the achievement attained through this relationship is highly appreciated by the school community, UNESCO National Commission, the government and the society at large. There have been collective efforts by all stake holders who work tirelessly at the school level i.e. Jangwani and Haukipudas; the governments of the two countries and UNESCO, for sustainable development of young generation.

We are greatly indebted by this kind deed and we pray that our friendship continues. Welcome to our beautiful country, Tanzania in 2012.

Find enclosed herewith, the receipts of the expenditure

Hope to see you soon.

Faithfully yours,

Headmistress