SCHOOL AID


New friends: Josh Palfreman’s journey around more than 100 schools in Uganda and Tanzania saw him meet many new friends and learn more about the impact of the work of UK charity School Aid


Aid is a rapidly developing British non-governmental organisation (nGO) that seeks to advance education in Africa by providing high quality educational materials to meet the diverse needs of young people in disadvantaged communities. In May 2010, I agreed to visit every school in tanzania and Uganda – more than 100 establishments – that had received educational materials over the past 12 years from School Aid and evaluate the effects of their aid in little over three months. School Aid does not have the resources to employ


any full-time east African representation. this complicates everything: from the safe and sound delivery of educational resources to recipient schools to the maintenance of its partnerships with local organisations on the ground. My offer as a volunteer to freely manage, monitor and evaluate – and more widely represent the charity to government, related nGOs and our recipient schools – provided a way for School Aid to get feedback about how effectively its donated materials were being used. Aside from the logistical nightmare that was east


Africa’s roads, railways and terrain, my journey was an extraordinary experience. Although locating some of the remote rural schools was sometimes very challenging, time-consuming and occasionally dangerous, I had the privilege of meeting thousands of students, teachers, parents and community members in more than 100east African schools. the African continent today faces many challenges


that we have grown used to hearing about. From famines in ethiopia to genocide in Sudan and hIV/ AIDS and crime in South Africa, the media tends to present the entire continent as a hopeless case. Based on my experiences, however, I am convinced that Africa is full of potential but lacks key investments in one particular area – education. how can epidemics, natural disasters or wars be stopped without a supply of educated doctors, engineers, environmentalists and leaders? they can’t. Studying education in east Africa and observing hundreds of schools in east Africa first-hand has led


SecEd • July 7 2011


School Aid in Africa I


n the summer of 2010, I spent a lot of time travelling ineast Africa. I travelled by rickshaw, I travelled on the back of motorcycles, I sat on trains, I endured 35-hour bus trips. I clocked up thousands of miles as I criss-crossed tanzania and Uganda visiting schools for the grassroots British charity, School Aid.


Founded in 1998 by Lady Joy Baker, School


Charity School Aid collects resources from UK schools and sends them to those in dire need in Africa. Last year, Josh Palfreman agreed to visit every school in Tanzania and


Uganda which has received materials from the charity. He discusses the charity’s work and his African journey


me to recognise some obvious barriers to development in east Africa. It is not that they do not have school buildings, it is that the schools lack basic resources such as desks and chairs, a library, books, a laboratory with instruments, or computers. the lack of educational resources in Africa is stark


and real. During my work with School Aid I visited a number of schools that had not yet received resources from the charity. Up to five students sharing a single desk and book was not an uncommon sight, neither was a classroom of 6th form students being taught science by a 6th form graduate – due to a severe lack of teachers. With no science equipment available, subjects such as chemistry were in many cases simply not taught. School Aid’s mission is to change this picture and


I can report that its efforts are working. Among the schools that I visited in tanzania and Uganda that had received resources from School Aid, some 24 had built or created a classroom or independent library to accommodate the hundreds of books that School Aid had donated. Many other schools had set up sports teams after receiving basic sports equipment that was unavailable in their local area, while others set up clubs and societies to debate issues found in the donated books. But are British books and resources relevant to east


African education, and do such donations undermine the efforts of local publishers? these common questions raised by western aid critics and sceptics are something that I took seriously during my east African investigation. the first thing I realised was that east African education was virtually identical to British education. the syllabuses that I collected were strikingly similar to those used in British schools.


Second, I learnt that the resources we were sending


to our recipients were not damaging to local industry. education is already a global market dominated by large corporations. take computers as an example. Microsoft and


Apple own up to 98 per cent of the computer market and are based in America. Books are another good example – we can be proud of our British publishers, but looking abroad, there few other english language publishers with the exception of the USA. And if you have ever shopped for books in new Zealand, Canada or Australia you will know the real price of importing hefty textbooks from the UK or USA. And so the importation of books and computers to Africa is not depressing industries, because they do not exist. Lastly, it is key to note that School Aid does pay


attention to the type of books it receives and sends. It does not send books on French food, American politics or British satire, but rather textbooks relevant to the syllabuses of the African states where School Aid operates. School Aid has long carried out its tasks by collecting


educational resources, ranging from computers, sports equipment and books from hundreds of schools, businesses and individuals across the UK. through its partners across the world it sends these resources to under resourced schools across the African continent. School Aid’s work is not only educational but very


much environmental too. the majority of the resources School Aid receives in its warehouse would otherwise end up thrown away and all of it is useful. the bankruptcy of a local business, for example, might yield a crate of company pens and stationery. When new textbooks and computers are introduced at schools and businesses across the UK, retired books and computers,


Further information


to keep up with the work of School Aid, visit www.school-aid.org and for more information about the Vodafone World of Difference programme, visit http://worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk


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sometimes just one year old, can end up being re-used in an under resourced African school. I returned to the School Aid’s UK warehouse in


September 2010 with hours of video interviews that I had collected, copies of the tanzanian and Ugandan syllabuses and hundreds of feedback forms, thank you letters, and other documents that our recipients and partners had passed on to me. I was however unable to continue volunteering


with School Aid in the UK because of financial reasons and thus my experiences and overall evaluation was in danger of being lost. that all changed when School Aid and I won the


Vodafone World of Difference grant in January. the idea behind the World of Difference programme is novel. Instead of giving money directly to charities, it pays individuals, like myself, to work for charities, making in effect a human resources contribution to charities across the world that cannot afford to take on more staff. School Aid and I were selected (along with 499 other individuals and charities) out of more than 11,000 applicants. With funding of £2,500, I was able to commit up


to 30 hours each week for School Aid UK for over two months. Since I began my work, I have focused largely on creating a video documentary with the raw footage I had collected last summer. this is now finished and can be viewed online. I also gave several presentations to School Aid’s


partners, UK volunteers and trustees and formed a strategic plan for School Aid to move forward with in the light of experiences and knowledge gained in east Africa last summer. School Aid and the World of Difference


programme have made a big difference in my life. I believe strongly that School Aid’s work is also making a world of difference for the benefit of education across Africa.


SecEd


• Josh Palfreman, 23, is now working with a similar UK-based charity named READ International in Tanzania until September and hopes to continue working and living in East Africa in the future. Email joshpalfreman@yahoo.com


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