Life Lessons

Thinking back on my childhood growing up in Portland, Maine (a long way away from Kitongo, Tanzania), one of my fondest memories is of grocery shopping with my father. I can vividly remember waking up on Saturday or Sunday mornings, jumping in the car, and heading off to the grocery store and the farmers market. There, I would help my dad pick out the groceries for the week, push (and sometimes ride) the cart, help pay at the cash register and carry the bags of food. Looking back now, these excursions into the real world weren’t just about the toy I’d be able to pick out at the end of the day (though at the time I was positive they were). These trips with my dad served an important role in my upbringing.


With all that is going on here on campus this year- transitioning to 100% solar power, moving the farm closer and closer to our sustainability goals, opening of a new dorm where we will accept new girls into our family, construction of our administration building, many dozens of wonderful guests- it is easy to forget the little things that we do here in our attempt to create well-rounded, caring, knowledgeable, girls who will one day be self-reliant citizens who make positive contributions to the world. Here are a few of my favorites, in three parts!

Family Market Day

For the past few months Mama Maggie, our head matron, has been taking small groups of girls with her to the market every Sunday to help her with shopping for things like cooking oil, flour, rice, soap, laundry detergent and spices. We started with the oldest girls first, usually taking four or five per week, and moving down grade by grade so that as many girls as possible would have the chance.

This particular Saturday morning was the youngest girls’ turn to go shopping with Mama Maggie. By the time I got out of bed and went to the girls’ home at around 8 AM, I found not four or five girls ready to go, but 13 girls dressed in their nicest clothes, carrying purses, and some wearing earrings. Bhoke had even applied lipstick.

While this may have been one of the cutest encounters of my life- it was surely a scene right out of “Little Rascals”- it was also an important day for the girls. During their field trip to the market the girls learn important skills that will help them later in life. They learn the price of food and supplies, learn how to barter at the market, are taught about family budgeting (although they may want to eat chicken and potatoes seven days per week, it just isn’t possible!), help in ensuring quality control by picking through and selecting only the best products, and learn teamwork through working together. 

At the end of a hot day in a dusty, sweaty market, the girls are treated to a soda as recognition for their hard work. While tough, it is an experience that the girls generally look forward to as they get to spend some time out in the world- always dressed in their Sunday best.

Global Citizens

With our guest and internship programs we often use the term “Global Citizens” in reference to the many wonderful people who pass through our campus. Through their experiences, we hope to give them diverse perspectives and a global outlook on the world to use as they navigate through school, careers, and family life.

 But how do we instill these same perspectives in our girls without traveling the many hundreds of miles to visit another country? One way is through media.









Twice per week, we buy JBFC’s secondary girls two English language newspapers. The girls then sit for hours thumbing through articles on elections in India (the world’s largest democracy), educating women in Afghanistan (astonishing advances have been made in recent years), violence in Nigeria (Boko Haram), peace talks in the Middle East, refugees in South Sudan.

 Sitting with these girls, discussing issues that they may have an impact on someday as leaders of their generation will be some of my best memories of JBFC. The girls can be found, long after dark, sitting outside under a tree debating the merits of one point of view or another.


Leadership Through Church

Through their experiences, we hope that all of the JBFC girls become leaders in their communities and role models for generations of girls to come. One way of creating confident leaders is through our prayer services and church here on campus. As anyone who has visited campus can tell you, various girls lead our nightly prayer services and Sunday morning Church services. Hearing Salome sing “Mambo Sawa Sawa” or Nyamisi lead “Mwamba Mwamba” are consistently guest favorites. They select the Bible readings, lead the prayers, call on contributors, and make general announcements regarding our JBFC community.


This past week, however, several of our girls have been provided a new opportunity to learn leadership through religion. One of the local churches in Kitongo has elected Eliza, Liku, Nyamisi, Nyamalwa, and Lau to be the representatives for all of the young adults and children in their congregation. With this opportunity, the girls will be given the chance to help plan services and events and to lead discussions with the young adults about the issues in their lives. On Sunday, I attended church with these girls and a couple of our guests (John, Ari, and James). What I saw was amazing. Not only did they help plan the service, but they were in charge of organizing all of the activities going on at the church that day- lunch, decorations, discussion time for young adults, child care for the toddlers. Eliza has been asked to teach Sunday school to the youngest members of the congregation- something I am confident she will excel at. 



With all of the big items on our daily, weekly, annual to-do lists, it is easy to forget that we are, in every way shape and form, a big family. We strive to make sure these 44 girls get all of the experiences that make a family, well, a family. We encourage them to try new things. We are proud of their accomplishments. We use moments of failure or frustration to teach and to build. Whether it’s cooking lessons from Dad, swimming with Melinda, or choir practice and Bible readings with Markus, we strive to give these girls as many tools as possible to succeed in the future. In the end, we are confident that the JBFC girls will look back on their time here with fond memories of a loving, productive childhood.










Seth Diemond is JBFC's Campus Director.

Farm Fresh

 

Something amazing is happening on the JBFC farm. For the past month, JBFC's farm employees have been harvesting vegetables on a nearly daily basis.

Now, Chinese cabbage, kale, Swiss chard, comfrey, zucchini, eggplant, white eggplant, squash, nutritious local greens called "mchicha" in Swahili, spider plant, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, passion fruit, papaya, banana, are all being harvested on JBFC's 40-acre campus.

And it's all being served up at one of our two dining halls- either feeding our 44 residential girls and 20 staff at our girls' home or helping to feed our 300 students and teaching staff at Joseph and Mary Schools.

   In addition to the immediately obvious benefits- improved nutrition, helping JBFC become more sustainable, and increased variety of food choice- JBFC's permaculture based system is helping to improve lives in other ways.


 JBFC's residential girls can be seen planting in the fields after school, watering banana trees in the plot across from their dorms, and mulching avocado and papaya trees on weekends all the while learning new farming techniques.




JBFC's farm employees- Mzee Kitula, Markus, Suzie, Elizabeth, Luka, Philipo, Emma, and Mathias, can now talk about water management techniques, the advantages of farming a mixture of annual and perennial crops, the importance of crop rotation, and the impact of soil erosion.


JBFC's village neighbors- long accustomed to farming mostly maize, cassava, and rice, have started to diversify their production of food for obvious benefits.

JBFC's many guests can be seen planting avocado, banana, pomegranate, grevaria, or passion throughout the year- a gift that will help JBFC continue to become more self-reliant for years to come.




JBFC's scholarship students participate in a work-study program helping to water, mulch, manure, and plant trees throughout the week, and learning yet another skill in our quest to  ensure they have productive, self-reliant lives in the future.


 It has been over six months since JBFC has had to buy greens for our school or home- something that we used to have to do twice per week.

In the past three months, we have been able to produce enough greens to not only feed our school twice per week (lunch) and our home twice per week (usually dinner), but we have also been able to supplement rice and beans with spinach, ugali and fish with eggplant, and breakfast with fruit. In the next couple of weeks we hope to be bringing food from farm-to-dining-hall on a daily basis meaning our girls will be able to eat vegetables seven days per week.










Want to know the benefits of having fruits and vegetables readily available on the JBFC campus? Look no further than the smiling Yonga as she bites into a tart passion fruit or snags a sweet papaya.















Blogger, Seth Diemond, is JBFC's Campus Director and helps oversee our farm operations.

JBFC Difference: School Clubs

 

I recently wrote about the excitement of opening a new school year at JBFC and Joseph and Mary Schools and the promise for the future that comes with that. This excitement is shared across Tanzania, if not the world. However, there is something that we do at JBFC and Joseph and
Mary Schools that sets us apart from education in the rest of Tanzania- school clubs.

In my five years of working with schools, NGO's, and students in Tanzania, I have very rarely come across school clubs that actually meet- extra-curricular activities that are an integral part of our
development into well-rounded, well-educated, capable, leaders in America. These activities are even more important in Tanzania where a strict curriculum and a lack of access to resources, information, and tools stunt interest and make it hard for students to gain the knowledge and skills that are often found outside of an official curriculum.

This year, Chris, Melinda, and I will be partnering with our Tanzanian teachers to pass on their knowledge, interests, and skills to students outside of the traditional classroom setting.

This year's clubs will include:

1st Grade English Competition

-Our pre-school through 3rd grade students will be participating in English games and competitions every Friday to improve their basic understanding of the English language.

-Chris and one of our science teachers, Mr. Cornelly, will be leading a poly-culture club to pass along to our students the skills that our poly-culture experts have taught us. They will be learning techniques in sustainable agriculture, methods to be self-reliant as they become young adults, and the joy that comes with working on a farm to provide your own food.

Budding Young Journalists

 

 

-Melinda will be co-leading a journalism club that will eventually produce a school newspaper and a year book and in the process improve our students' writing skills.

Neema R during Debate Club

-Mr. Freddrick and I will be co-leading a debate and current events club that will pass along our passion and knowledge of world events to our students and train them in speaking in front of groups, sharing ideas, and the importance of valuing different perspectives and viewpoints.

Debate Club trying not to laugh during tongue twisters



Jonas laughing during Drama Club




 

-A reading club led by our librarian, Mr. Simon, will involve students in reading groups and book clubs to improve their reading and comprehension skills. The ability to read in English and to appreciate the value of books is an integral part of educating the next generation of Tanzanian leaders.


-Other teachers will be leading clubs in arts and crafts, music, and drama.

Something so often taken for granted in America and often under-appreciated is helping us revolutionize and re-define education in Tanzania and in our effort to create well rounded, well-informed, global leaders.

Blogger Seth Diemond is JBFC's Campus Director.

JBFC's Year in Review

2013 has been an incredible year at JBFC. We've grown and changed, while staying true to our mission... ending poverty one child at a time. Here are some of the highlights from our year.

We couldn't have done any of it without all of you. Thanks for all of the love, support, and prayers over the last year. We will need all of that and more in the year to come. We have big plans in store for 2014 and we will make sure we keep you informed of all that's going on in Tanzania, right here on this blog. So stay tuned...


In 2013, JBFC expanded our campus and got a bird's eye view of all that we have done in our village of Kitongo, Tanzania.

Thanks to some generous friends we added a dining hall big enough for our entire school community, where we served 200,000 meals in 2013.

Our students at Joseph & Mary School continued to excel, outscoring the rest of the students in our district.

And to keep our kids making the grade... JBFC launched Book by Book to build the JBFC Library.

We said farewell to old friends...

George & Connie

 

 

 

 

Kayci Hebard

And said hello to some new ones...

Seth Diemond

 

 

 

 

Melinda Wulf

We had more guests...

 

 

 

 

doing more things....

 

 

 

and raising more money and awareness about JBFC than ever before.

 

Nina's Share the Joy of Reading Project

 

Emily's Art for Africa Project

We swapped letters with our new pen pals in New York...



Exchanged art with some talented girls in Tulsa...

... which was featured in a local art show.

We flexed our creative muscles in other ways...

... learning drama and taking to the stage.

Thanks to our Permaculture partners, JBFC's farm is growing more fruitful and efficient by the day, providing our campus with most of our food needs and saving the organization money.

And we expanded our campus restaurant, Papa's, so we can serve more customers, help train more underprivileged youth, and continue to make JBFC more self-sustaining.

We partnered with the Walkabout Foundation to give some of our handicapped students some new wheels.

We saw more smiles...

 

 

and had more laughs...

 

than one year should be able to hold.

But 2014 promises to be even better.

For more information about JBFC and its mission, please check out our website.

For more pictures from JBFC, please visit our Facebook page.

And don't forget we're on Youtube, releasing monthly videos to give you more insight into what's happening in Tanzania.