STEM Project in Tanzania
The STEM Tanzania project was launched with the vision of empowering Tanzanian school teachers. It aims to familiarise young Africans with innovative STEM tools and 21st century problem-solving skills, using them in their future work and contributing to the local community.
For this purpose, SciCo joined forces with Wheeling2help and the local organization “SANA” and for one week – between November 24 and December 3, 2023 – Theodoris Anagnostopoulos (Project Leader) and Maria Vlastara (Project Coordinator) together with volunteers Eleana Solakidou and Andreas Hito (Stem Educators), were in Tanzania. The team visited two primary and one secondary school in three villages in Tanzania (Gongo, Matwpilli, Mkange). The project was piloted together with local community teachers who had participated in a two-day interactive workshop, contributing to the scientific and technological literacy of the participants through a “train-the-trainer” approach.
Six local community teachers were trained as part of the project, who at the end of the week were fully trained to lead the programme and implement it with over 300 of their students. At the end of the programme, more teachers showed interest and the local partners expressed their desire for future collaboration after the positive feedback they received from the schools involved in the programme.
Some of the future goals for the development of the project include providing the workshop to more teachers in the local community, extending the duration of the workshop, involving more volunteers, developing the curriculum, and exploring solutions to overcome the problem of lack of electricity in local communities.
