Travel Report – Tanzania July 2024
Dear friends of P.A.P.A. Bridge,
The time has come again! We have been traveling to our project during summer time, and we may send you the newest updates of our project in Tanzania. At the beginning of July, we were on site and have many news to report.
Summary
After the leaving of our long-time principal Mary Mchaki, we positioned Philomena as a leader for an interim solution from 2023 on. Unfortunately, this temporary solution did not work out well and some activities were slowed down. Now we are glad that we have found a new principal, Walter Kessy, who will provide new and important impulses for further growth. This visit lasted four days and with three members of the PAPA Bridge board we were well represented.
The ongoing school operations
At first, we may report on the positive developments:
Firstly, the outstanding grades and degrees of our students should be highlighted. In the last school year, which ended in December 2023, all the students took the final exams of the state of Tanzania and the results show very good grades. Even th
e representative of the education authority, who also attended our board meeting, praised the students’ results! Secondly, an equally good development is the growth in the number of students. Within one year, we have worked
our way up from 200 to 270 students, which brings in more money through school fees and a better utilization of the school campus. Thirdly, the teaching staff has also developed well. We have reached a very good level by hiring new good teachers here and there. Against this background we would like to congratulate the whole team in Kilema on the very good performances in education!
Now to the challenges:
The leadership work of our interim principal Philomena has turned out to be less good. As a consequence, the productivity of the Business Development Center has decreased sharply. This made it clear that unfortunately a new shift in the lead of the V.T.C. has become necessary.
Thus, a new principal named Walter Kessy was introduced t
o us and he took over the position of the principal on April 1st, 2024. He has finished a bachelor’s degree in Computer Technology and IT and has worked as an entrepreneur in the IT sector for several companies. He had to resettle from Dar es Salaam to Kilema. With him as a principal, we can get started new and pick up speed in management and in the area of production. We wish him all the success.
Finances
Since mid-last year we have had a new finance controller on board. Her name is Jesca and she does solid work. Every quarter we get a finance report that shows the performance of our production areas.
Departments and Business Development Center (BDC)
As already mentioned, we have fallen back in the production area. The turnovers, profits and also the quality of the delivered products have dropped. Thus, we have to resharpen massively. We now want to present the most important potentials for improvement:
Masonry and brick production
Here there is little movement. We are rather stagnating and at the moment a clear strategy is missing on how to increase the sold quantities. The team can produce 800 bricks per day; however, only about 4000 bricks are sold per month. Thus, this department is strongly underutilized. As a first idea for growth, two additional sizes of bricks should be offered to get more customers. Furthermore, marketing needs to be operated more strongly to appeal to more customers. We are eager to see how well these steps will help us move forward.
Metalworking and carpentry
The year 2023 was rather weak as far as the orders and the delivered quality are concerned. That’s why several things were changed internally. Mainly the two separated areas carpentry and metalworking were combined to one production unit for furniture manufacturing. With this merging, motivation and teamwork has increased significantly, so that the first new orders could be delivered faster and with better quality in the second quarter of 2024. This area should therefore gain significantly in importance by the end of 2024. We are excited!
Agriculture and animal husbandry
Since our last visit in July 2023, the building for agriculture and animal husbandry has been largely completed. The building consists of two classrooms for 100 students and a
really great laboratory for practicals. Other parts are rooms for storage, teachers and toilets. The lessons for our Level 1 students are already running.
A very impressive figure is the teacher for this department, named Robinson. He has been part of the team since February this year and has brought an enormous amount of knowl
edge and skills. With him we have taken an important step forward!
Concerning the activities: In addition to school lessons, there are already some experiments underway on how to properly handle plants and animals in order to build up knowledge and also to offer products for sale – e.g. the cultivation of Artemisia and further valuable herbs as well as chicken and pig breeding. We are excited how this new department will develop.
Bakery
We already explained in our last report a year ago that the sales environment for the bakery products has become more difficult. The reason for this is that the inflation made the prices for the materials like flour, oil, energy etc. increase massively, while the selling prices could hardly be risen, as the customers do not have more money available. That’s why the bakery currently is in a small crisis, which needs to be overcome. The aim is to again reduce the production costs considerably to reach decent margins again. This should work by having higher quantities, lower transport costs through vehicles that require less fuel, and through better production processes in order to increase the output. We hope that our production team on site will set successful optimizing steps.
Water bottling (BDC)
The project of water bottling has had a standstill unfortunately. There was still an approval from the government missing to be officially allowed to bottle and sell water. This approval has now been existing
for a week. Immediately, a laboratory technician was hired to take over quality assurance in the laboratory on site and to observe the manufacturing. The current challenge now is to build up a constant production flow and to win customers accordingly. It is the plan to produce around 200 cartons (á 12 bottles) per day as quickly as possible. We will report!
Further areas
The following areas are running consistently and are supported by us as needed: Electrics, mechanics / driving school, tailoring, food production / canteen, plumbing, ICT, tourism, sales shop / wholesale shop (for BDC).
Godfather program
Our sponsorship / Godfather program is running consistently and reliably. It is an extremely important contribution for the very poor families in the village so that also these can send their children to school. By doing so, we take many adolescents out from poverty, as they will be able to assert themselves better with their professional knowledge later. The situation of missing payments of school fees has slightly improved since our last visit but is still tense.
Next steps
Father Aidan was coming to Austria and he celebrated the PAPA-Bridge evening in Kalsdorf/Fernitz on August.
At this point we would like to once again thank all the donors and friends of P.A.P.A.-Bridge who have supported us so valuablely to date!
And at the same time, we would like to express our great REQUEST to reach out to as many other people as possible in order to ensure the necessary financial support for the needy people in Kilema – especially now, when inflation is hitting the local people very hard!
ASANTE SANA!
Best wishes and God’s blessings to you,
Walter Koch – chairman
Josef Windisch – vice chairman, Claudia Schanes – Godfather program
Pater Aidan – project management Tanzania
and the whole board of P.A.P.A-Bridge
