What is the need?

Currently, secondary schools in Dar es Salaam suffer from inadequate resources and infrastructure. Classes may hold up to 100 students, and as a result, rote learning is the standard teaching method. Youth advocates say schools fail to teach the skills employers are looking for or encourage entrepreneurial thinking.

Our solution

In 2016, CDI piloted a new programme called the Think Big Challenge, which required teams of secondary school students from across Dar to research, design and implement solutions to problems they experience in their everyday lives. Its aims were twofold: firstly, to give young people an opportunity to develop employability-boosting soft skills, and secondly, to inspire them to work towards mitigating problems in their schools and communities. During the programme, we assisted students in realising their initiatives and trained them in skills such as evaluation, leadership and project planning. In self-evaluation surveys, students felt they had improved in 11 out of 12 skill areas. Meanwhile, the 13 successful initiatives were creative and combatted very real problems, such as teaching the jobless how to bake and sell cakes and transforming paper litter into fuel.

What's next?

This year, the Think Big Challenge is being subsumed into the larger Careers Network Support programme (a collaboration with local NGO Bridge For Change) and introduced to 18 new schools in three cycles. Bridge For Change's supply of local knowledge will ensure that the programme has a more focused dimension of careers advice. CNS aims to enable students to leave school more informed, employable and self-sufficient.

Where do you come in?

We are currently fundraising for the second cycle of CNS, taking place between 1 July and 30 September 2017. Your money will go directly towards programme costs including student transport to the workshops, start-up costs for their initiatives and prizes for the winners of the challenge, to name but a few.