The Born Free Foundation is an international wildlife charity working throughout the world to protect threatened species in the wild. Born Free has supported the work of Sea Sense since 2001, making a significant contribution to the recovery of nesting populations of green and hawksbill turtles in Mafia Island.
Sea Sense partners with the Born Free Foundation to deliver the Global Friends Programme, which aims to provide African schools with vital resources such as school desks and books and develop educational programmes that encourage children to learn about and take action for wildlife. Several primary schools in Mafia Island have benefited from the programme which has helped to build a link between conservation, education and communities.
Over the past few months, Sea Sense has been visiting schools in Mafia to identify which resources are most needed and in which schools. Of course, there are always more requests than the programme budget can accommodate but we try to spread the benefits across several schools and provide a range of resources so that pupils can have access to a variety of educational activities. The most popular request is for text books which are in short supply in many Tanzanian schools.
On this occasion, Bweni and Juani Primary Schools were the beneficiaries of the Global Friends Programme. Bweni Primary School requested text books covering History, Civics and Geography for Standard Six and Seven pupils. The Mafia District Education Officer and Ward Primary School Coordinator accompanied Sea Sense staff to Bweni to make the presentation to the teachers and pupils. The pupils were overwhelmed with excitement at receiving their new books and promised to read them from cover to cover!
Juani Primary School requested resources that would enable them to develop music and sporting activities at their school. Sea Sense responded by delivering some musical instruments to establish a school band together with a football kit for the school football team. Staff from Mafia District Council and Mafia Island Marine Park joined in the presentation event and saw for themselves the expressions on the children's faces. The children could hardly believe their eyes and even the din of the drums could not drown out their laughter as they experimented with their new equipment. We wonder if the teachers will ever get a moments peace again!
