Zanzibar Projects Updates and Achievements from Q4 2018 - African Impact

Adult Class Nursery Kanga Ladies Community Project English Tuition Teach the Teacher Ecobrick Hours Coral Reef Surveys Bean Cleanup Dolphin Monitoring

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“Habari za usiku?”

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WHAT’S NEW ON THE GROUND?

LANGUAGE LESSON:

“How is your night?” in Kiswahili

At the end of 2018 we had some sad farewells to make. Lisa, our Program and Business Manager, and Claudy, our Education Coordinator, moved on to pastures new. They were both well-loved within the community so it’s been hard to say goodbye but we have some awesome new team members to fill the gap. We have 2 new Education Coordinators, Kya and Dan, and a new Program and Business Manager, Mira. All of them have already settled into life on Zanzibar and are loving their new roles!

During this quarter, 13 volunteers went on 44 monitoring sessions where we saw 486 dolphins, 733 tourists, and 246 boats. We are consistently having to travel farther away to find dolphins, traveling about 2 hours roundtrip almost every day., which suggests that these unethical tourist boat tours are driving the dolphins further from the bay. The dolphins have been spotted more often around Jambiani, a distance that we cannot reach from Kizimkazi on our boats. This puts dolphin tours that operate in Kizimkazi in jeopardy.

This quarter, the Dolphin and Marine Conservation Project officially launched the Kizimikazi Ethical Dolphin Tours. These tours market the current issues surrounding the dolphin tours, promote our ethical tour and drivers, and generate income for the drivers we have trained. Volunteers developed a business plan, created a Facebook page and logo, and have done numerous hotel presentations in Kizimkazi and Jambiani. We have 4 hotels marketing and booking ethical dolphin tours with us. This quarter we booked 21 tours with 74 tourists.

The Dimbani nursery through secondary school has needed painting for quite some time. While we started painting some classrooms during Q3, we finally finished one classroom block in Q4, painting 5 classrooms all together. These classrooms now are bright and clean, making a better environment for the students. Hopefully we can tackle a second classroom block this year!

In October, volunteers planned and conducted a recertification training course for our boat drivers who had previously graduated from the Ethical Boat Driver Workshop. We did this to ensure that all our boat drivers are still giving ethical tour and are up to date on the more recent information available, especially as we started ethical tour development and marketing. 7 drivers were recertified, bringing our total number of usable drivers to 10.

Conservation Club finished its first module of the year, “Protecting Our Oceans.” 26 students completed the final baseline exam to finish the year. All the students improved their scores from the beginning of the module, and homework averages and attendance were above 90% for the course. We then took a fieldtrip to Nungwi where students learned about sea turtle conservation on Zanzibar at the turtle sanctuary and participated in a scavenger hunt. They were rewarded points for every erosion control method they saw, talking to fishermen about their catch, asking dolphin tour guides about ethical driving, and much more.

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On 13th December we hosted a Graduation Day for all students. The day provided us with a chance to get together and celebrate all the hard work and achievements throughout the year. There were 18 students who successfully passed their exams across all classes and have therefore now moved up into a higher class.

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A particular success story which we are very proud of is one of our Maasai Students, Papa, who, since attending the school has managed to progress from Beginners Class into High. He scored an average of 84% on his end of year medium exams which was the perfect reward for his hard work and effort.

“Teaching Project: Zanzibar is a beautiful island with an impressing community. The volunteer work is amazing and I really noticed that I change something in the community.”

Beatrice Van der Gucht, Belgium

In both October and November of last year, we completed our end of year Child Assessments in all 4 nurseries for both juniors and seniors – involving over 200 children. We’re delighted that the averages in all classes have improved – this clearly giving evidence of the positive and meaningful impact our Nursery, Education and Well-being program is having in all nurseries.

In December, we held our second annual Road Safety Week which culminated in all staff members supervising the children from all 4 nurseries safely across the road – making the week a huge success as the children were able to put into practice what they had learned. A total of 10 volunteers were involved in helping out during this session for 177 nursery children.

On Friday 7th December 2018, we held our final community project event during which volunteers went into the village and down the beach to sell as many products as possible to approach hotels and tourists. This proved to be a huge success as the total money raised reached 135,000TSH – a huge improvement on any prior efforts. Importantly, all money earnt during this event is given back to the Kanga Ladies, this being a great income generator for them.

We were delighted to be able to fundraise enough money to help fund the children in all 4 of the nurseries we work with to go on a fun-filled day out which included a visit to Kariakoo - an amusement park in Stone Town, Zanzibar Park and the day finished off with the children relaxing by the sea and watching the sunset in Fumba.