Together we can!

In august 2022, together with the three other staff participants, Peter Joseph Mbwambo, Regina Pius Chuwa and Elyia Joseph Kheri and 10 student participants, we went to Norway to work with our partner, Molde University College.

Because it is my second time being on exchange in Norway, I had a role of guiding and follow up the student’s participants. Despite being a teacher, I had little experience in leading. It was a bit challenging, but fortunately, it went well and in the end, hence I gained a lot of experience.

We are all very grateful for the Norec project, it broadens our minds by giving us the opportunity to learn, to see, to share, to create awareness about people with disabilities in Norway and in Tanzania. Thus, we had the opportunity to give a lot of presentations concerning CRC and CRPD to Molde University College and the University College centre in Kristiansund, targeting students and staff. We also visited a range of schools, e.g., Nordbyen Skole, Romsdal videregående skole og Fannefjord Videregående skole, and gave lectures targeting children about human rights.  It was very exciting, and we appreciated seeing the pupils’ behaviour and that they interacted with us while teaching. The pupils made efforts to learn much about human rights, although they already knew a lot about the subject.

We got the opportunity to visit Enen Aktivitetssenter, and it was very interesting to see how people with disabilities were respected, valued, and trusted. It was also very interesting to see how people with disabilities engaged in a lot of different economic activities and how the community trust the centre by giving them support by ordering their product.

Only a short period of time after we came back to Tanzania, the Norwegian project participants arrived. The participants who stayed in Arusha were practising at Patandi Primary and Secondary School, and we had the lucky chance of being together several times by working together, showing them around, guiding them when necessary, discussing what to do and what not to do to make things easy for them. Luckily, the group was amazing and flexible to accept changes, to ask when they fail to understand, and to work hard despite the environment is different from what they used to see in Norway.

As we participate in a lot of outdoor activities concerning people with disabilities in Norway, our plan is to arrange one special occasion that will involve children with disabilities together with their parents from different schools in Meru, e.g. Muivaro primary, Chemchem primary, Leganga primary, Patandi primary etc. to come to that special place. They will engage in different activities, like sports and games, dancing, singing and performing different arts, e.g. drawing, painting, design etc. This plan will help parents and the community to get an awareness about their children and the talents that they have, so that these children will also feel free, recognized and comfortable.

I believe that through working together, in Tanzania and Norway, we can achieve the project goals and children with disabilities will have their rights fulfilled like others. Although I understand that Norway is more advanced than us, we still need each other to make this work.

Staff Participants 2022 from PATCO:

Peter Joseph  Mbwambo

Regina Pius Chuwa

Eliya Joseph Kheri

Leah Daniel Makundi