Monday, March 14, 2011

Our Farm and Livestock

Every business, organization, or even individual reaches a point in their lifespan where they need to step back, evaluate, and re-organize. At JBFC, we had reached that point in our livestock and agriculture department last year, and we felt it was time to make some significant changes.

I should probably diverge for a minute, however, and talk about this department and why it is so important to the JBFC model. The first reason is that we at JBFC are constantly working towards self-sustainability. We hope, once all of our income-generating projects reach maturity, we will be able to provide for all of our operating expense in-country, allowing us to focus more of our budget on expansion and helping more children. A large part of these self-sustaining plans are reliant on our agriculture and livestock programs. However, this department also plays a big hand in life education for our children. By having our girls and students involved in learning how these projects are run, we are setting them up with invaluable skills to succeed later in life. We are showing them, by example, how to lead a sustainable life.

The first thing we have done, is to evaluate the various pieces of our farm, and looked to see which were the most productive. For instance, turkeys, pigs, and ducks are much more productive and profitable than milk cows and local chickens. So, as we looked at the business side of the farm, we realized a need to put more effort into those areas. Secondly, having struggled with the accountability of our workers in this department for some time, we figured it best to divide all of our workers, and put each one of them in charge of a different piece of the farm, creating an easy way to keep workers accountable.

We have only been trying this new system for a month, but it seems to be working. We have already seen tremendous improvement in the cleanliness of our farm, the livestock has begun to fatten up, and the vegetable garden is incredibly organized and weed-free! We are hoping this new system will continue to show improvements in the coming months while we continue to evaluate the different aspects of the farm and livestock ares, so that JBFC-Kitongo can move even closer to our self-sustainability goal!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Brief Update on the School

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long silence. Slow to no internet is one of the many challenges of living in the Tanzanian bush!

Anyways, I would like to take a minute and discuss some of the major improvements at the school, following up on a previous blog about the challenges we are facing with the current education system. At the end of last year, we made some major changes in our teaching staff, bringing in some more qualified teachers with a greater understanding of English (since we are an English-Medium school). We were fortunately able to find these teachers due to the growing popularity of our school.

Thanks to these staff changes and continuing staff development, school is running much, much more smoothly this year. For two weeks before opening the school, we sat as a school staff, working to bring new concepts and techniques to the table, and discussed how these new ideas could be implemented in our school. We also agreed to rearrange our early years so that the students in our kindergarten, first, and second grades stay with the same teacher and aide for three years, creating consistency during incredibly important years of development. We have many new supplies for our classrooms, and we have recently had a math teacher from the States run a week-long seminar on math techniques and teaching styles. With all of this coming together, we are extremely hopeful for the year (and years) ahead. We have faith that our students will quickly rise to the top, and these systems we are using currently will be a model for many other schools.

And, just to mention, even though we ourselves viewed last year as one with many new challenges, we passed with flying colors by national standards. Our fourth grade had a 100% pass-mark on the national exams last fall, which put us on the radar on the national level for excellence in education.

I will write another post in the next few days about the progress being made with our documentary (the film crew is in Tanzania), but until then, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of JBFC. We would not be able to do what we are doing without you.