My Commercial
We all remember Sally Struthers and her plight for saving children by sponsoring them – “Just ten cents a day”. Sally and her naturally broken voice, her big blond hair, her pleading eyes. What we also may remember were the pictures of those kids she was trying to save – the ones with the bloated stomachs, the sunken faces, their pleading eyes. Emaciated child holding the hand of a fellow emaciated child. These commercials were always on in the 80s and early 90s. They’ve faded though from TV mainstream and I wonder if Sally Struthers is intuitively known for anything else but those commercials.
Last Friday, the school was filled with students who were competing for the chance to be sponsored. It was the start of Orkeeswa Secondary School’s annual selection process, which is quite involved and spans over a month’s time.
Step 1: Sign-up and interview day. This took place last Friday. Close to 400 students or student-age youth came to the school to qualify to take the test. Most of them arrived before 8:30 and the day didn’t end until around 4 pm.
The main reason Orkeeswa was founded and built was to have a school that was affordable for even the poorest of the poor. Private schools in Tanzania, as they mostly are world-wide, are astronomical in price. Government schools, the ones that are supposed to be for the greater, common population, cost a family $400 a year for tuition. This is above and beyond what most of our students’ families can pay. Our Form 2 students, Orkeeswa’s first class, is filled with older students (some in their early to mid-20s) whose families could never afford to send them to secondary school before Orkeeswa was built. Orkeeswa costs $25 a year, a charge that is meant to be low enough to be affordable yet high enough to insure buy-in from the families. The rest of the students’ fees are paid through a sponsorship program and other fundraising.
Due to this, Orkeeswa will only allow students who are proven to have a need continue to the next step, which is taking the test. To ensure that, Orkeeswa gathers a group of headmasters from primary schools in surrounding villages and various village leaders. Any student vying for a seat at the test walks into the room with this group of people and between the group of them, at least one of the “judges” is able to identify who that child is, recite their whole life story and know, in fact, if that child is eligible. Of the almost 400 students who showed up, over 50 were disqualified for lying about where they were from and how poor they really were. Some students come from as far as the city of Arusha in order to lie and try to make to the next step.
Each potential student who qualifies gets their pertinent information recorded, is given a number, photographed, and is told to come back the next day for the test. Last year, 178 made it through the first step and sat for the test. This year there were 179.
Step 2: Test Day. Five teachers and four staff members spent the entirety of a rainy Saturday organizing students into lines, sorting tests, proctoring tests, grading tests, and making sure test-takers weren’t cheating. I did all of these things. I was also responsible for “patting” the female students down. I wasn’t checking for firearms; I was checking for hidden methods of cheating, for handwriting on arms, for old tests and other pieces of paper tucked in skirts and pockets or hidden in the folds of khangas. I think almost all but a few that qualified made it to test day. The high scores of the day ranged between 40% and 66%. Seventy potential students move on to Step 3.
Step 3: Test Day, Part II. This is the first year Orkeeswa will administer a second round of tests to a smaller pool of potential students. This takes place this Saturday. Instead of an hour and a half, this second test will only take 45 minutes and will only have 25 questions.
The following steps have only been told to me. I’ve never been here for them so I don’t know about them from firsthand experience. After the high scores are recorded from the second test, 2-3 Orkeeswa staff members – usually Peter, the executive director; the office manager’ and maybe Rapha, the deputy director – make a number of boma visits. They go to the homes of the high scorers, meet their families, drinks sips of warm goat milk or leshoro (ground corn cooked with milk and flour) that’s usually offered, talk with the potential students, take pictures. This is how the school is able to definitively judge the need of the individual student as well as assess their personality to see if they’d be a good fit in the school. From there, the list of potential students narrows further and further until they finally pick the 35 members of Orkeeswa’s third class. The 35 will get new red and blue uniforms, red ties, and black shoes and start pre-Form in September. Pre-Form goes until the end of the school year in December and consists of full school days of nothing but English. Next January, they will start Form One wide-eyed and eager.
If you're interested in sponsoring a member of Orkeeswa's newest class or donating money, go to ieftz.org
Last Friday, the school was filled with students who were competing for the chance to be sponsored. It was the start of Orkeeswa Secondary School’s annual selection process, which is quite involved and spans over a month’s time.
Step 1: Sign-up and interview day. This took place last Friday. Close to 400 students or student-age youth came to the school to qualify to take the test. Most of them arrived before 8:30 and the day didn’t end until around 4 pm.
The main reason Orkeeswa was founded and built was to have a school that was affordable for even the poorest of the poor. Private schools in Tanzania, as they mostly are world-wide, are astronomical in price. Government schools, the ones that are supposed to be for the greater, common population, cost a family $400 a year for tuition. This is above and beyond what most of our students’ families can pay. Our Form 2 students, Orkeeswa’s first class, is filled with older students (some in their early to mid-20s) whose families could never afford to send them to secondary school before Orkeeswa was built. Orkeeswa costs $25 a year, a charge that is meant to be low enough to be affordable yet high enough to insure buy-in from the families. The rest of the students’ fees are paid through a sponsorship program and other fundraising.
Due to this, Orkeeswa will only allow students who are proven to have a need continue to the next step, which is taking the test. To ensure that, Orkeeswa gathers a group of headmasters from primary schools in surrounding villages and various village leaders. Any student vying for a seat at the test walks into the room with this group of people and between the group of them, at least one of the “judges” is able to identify who that child is, recite their whole life story and know, in fact, if that child is eligible. Of the almost 400 students who showed up, over 50 were disqualified for lying about where they were from and how poor they really were. Some students come from as far as the city of Arusha in order to lie and try to make to the next step.
Each potential student who qualifies gets their pertinent information recorded, is given a number, photographed, and is told to come back the next day for the test. Last year, 178 made it through the first step and sat for the test. This year there were 179.
Step 2: Test Day. Five teachers and four staff members spent the entirety of a rainy Saturday organizing students into lines, sorting tests, proctoring tests, grading tests, and making sure test-takers weren’t cheating. I did all of these things. I was also responsible for “patting” the female students down. I wasn’t checking for firearms; I was checking for hidden methods of cheating, for handwriting on arms, for old tests and other pieces of paper tucked in skirts and pockets or hidden in the folds of khangas. I think almost all but a few that qualified made it to test day. The high scores of the day ranged between 40% and 66%. Seventy potential students move on to Step 3.
Step 3: Test Day, Part II. This is the first year Orkeeswa will administer a second round of tests to a smaller pool of potential students. This takes place this Saturday. Instead of an hour and a half, this second test will only take 45 minutes and will only have 25 questions.
The following steps have only been told to me. I’ve never been here for them so I don’t know about them from firsthand experience. After the high scores are recorded from the second test, 2-3 Orkeeswa staff members – usually Peter, the executive director; the office manager’ and maybe Rapha, the deputy director – make a number of boma visits. They go to the homes of the high scorers, meet their families, drinks sips of warm goat milk or leshoro (ground corn cooked with milk and flour) that’s usually offered, talk with the potential students, take pictures. This is how the school is able to definitively judge the need of the individual student as well as assess their personality to see if they’d be a good fit in the school. From there, the list of potential students narrows further and further until they finally pick the 35 members of Orkeeswa’s third class. The 35 will get new red and blue uniforms, red ties, and black shoes and start pre-Form in September. Pre-Form goes until the end of the school year in December and consists of full school days of nothing but English. Next January, they will start Form One wide-eyed and eager.
If you're interested in sponsoring a member of Orkeeswa's newest class or donating money, go to ieftz.org
posted by Siapiau | 7:15 AM
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