Child sponsorship update from Arusha
19 Nov 2008
Update from Summer 2008 for child sponsors now available for anyone to read
The village is wonderfully doing well in all wings. It has four wings namely the SOS Children’s Village, SOS Nursery School, SOS Primary School and SOS Family Strengthening Programme.
SOS Children's Village:
The Children Village (SOSCV) is now operating above the capacity having 101 children. Out of them, 51 are boys and 50 are girls. We have 7 children in secondary school, 83 in primary school and 9 in nursery school. We have also 2 children in Ghana who joined in June this year. The two are Dennis Kinnabo and Joseph Aminiel. The performance of our children is still impressive. 22 children ranked from number 1 - 10 in their second term exams. 70 children which is 69.3% scored above 60%. 14 children sat for class seven national examination.
We planned to start the youth home next year in a rented building while waiting for construction of a youth home but we are not yet sure due to budget constraint. We expect that next year we will start extension of family houses and youth home by building 5 more family house and 2 youth homes. ( boys and Girls)
In general the children are well and happy. 5 children got first communion and confirmation on 13th July. All the children and staff celebrated SOS day on 23rd June. They visited also different National parks during the year.
SOS Nursery School:
The nursery school has 89 kids in three classes. Baby class with 30 kids, middle class with 30 kids and the preparatory class or big class with 29 kids. The big class will be class one in the SOS Primary School in January next year. In this year, the nursery school has also helped --- children from the community by offering them scholarship. These are children that could have been admitted to the village but due to lack of vacancies they missed that opportunity.
SOS Primary School
In the SOS schools there are 383 pupils. There are 251 pupils in primary School and 132 in Secondary school. Among the total number, 90 are from the SOS Children's Village, 50 under scholarship and the remaining 243 are coming from the community around us.
On 24th November the primary wing conducted its first form four graduation and its second class seven graduations. It was a good time for us as the ceremony marks also our maturity as the facility. Performance wise the school is doing well as in its mock examination conducted in May 2008 it ranked 8 out of 104 schools making our school centre for excellence.
We have also scholarship students both in secondary school and primary. Currently we have 12 scholarships in primary school and 38 in secondary school. The criteria for admission in the scholarship program are the same as in the kindergarten but with the additional criterion that the awardees must have and maintain outstanding performance at school.
SOS Family Strengthening Programme:
The family strengthening programme deals directly to the community by supporting vulnerable family in order to avoid child abandonment. Currently it has 399 beneficiaries of which 88 are care givers and 311 are children. Among the children 75 are in the daycare centre run by the program and the remaining are at different schools within the area. These beneficiaries receive various supports like educational support, food support and medical support.
On behalf of all the staff and children of SOS Children’s Village Arusha, we sincerely thank you for your generous support to our facility. It is through your support that we have achieved what we have achieved.
May the God bless you a lot
Loishiye Marambo, Village Director and Lengai Sakaya Mollel, Sponsorship co-ordinator
Relevant Countries: Tanzania.