Close cooperation with the Department of Education
Now the time has come for Tanzania. International Aid Services inaugurated an office in Tanzania this February and is now investigating the possibilities of adjusting the ordinary schools to so called ”including schools” in three of the regions chosen by the Department of Education. The goal is for the regions Kagera, Rukwa and Mara to have at least six counseling groups for children with special needs before December 2014. The groups must gather and share knowledge and experience of the local community's attitude towards disabled children's right to education. By the end of 2014 it is the goal is to have at least 3,000 children and youth with special learning needs receiving the necessary support to complete primary school. If the project is a success, it will be implemented in other parts of Tanzania.
All this is happening in close cooperation with the national department of Education.
- We have a lot of experience from Somaliland, Southern Sudan and Northern Ethiopia, although their governments are not strong. To some extend we therefore had to build up the things from scratch. In Somaliland we have only recently handed over the Special School to the Department of Education. The situation in Tanzania is somewhat different. The Department of Education is stronger here, and thus we have had a close cooperation from the start, says Anders Jacobsen national director of International Aid Services in Tanzania.
Tanzania has joined the goal ”Education for All”, which builds on the Millennium Development Goals and UN's Human Rights Convention on the rights of the disabled. The government has yet to carry out these goals.
- Especially in the rural areas the population is quite uninformed about the rights and opportunities of the disabled, says Anders Jacobsen.

Collaborators with network and expert knowledge
How will you carry this out?
- We have selected two major partners to work with. One of them is the Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania (FPCT), which has 350,000 members and a huge network throughout the country. Through these we will be able to meet key persons and groups, with whom we need to cooperate in order to strengthen the local communities on firebrand level. The other partner is ICD (Information Centre for Disability), an information centre for disabled, which gathers and shares knowledge from all Tanzania, and is very strong in speaking the rights for the disabled, and they have often been called in as counselors for the Government.
Where will you start?
- We want to help different community groups to organize in order for them to be heard, locally, regionally and nationally. But we also see the need for institutional capacity building of the Department. It is the responsibility of the Department of Education to educate teachers to teach children with special needs. But only on a small scale they have been able to do this, and if we just leave it up to the Department of Education to meet this need, it will take a long time. And if we only work with lobbyists and speaking the rights, it will also take a long time.

Long distance training of school teachers
Instead we enter cooperation with a teachers’ Seminary, Patandi Teachers College and start long distance training of school teachers so they get equipped to include children with special needs in their classes. Regional centers will be established where teachers can be called in for seminars, and the children’s needs can be evaluated at a so called clearing. Then an action plan will be made for the individual child and a placement in a relevant institution.
We need to cover large geographical areas. Tanzania is divided in to 24 regions with a total of 15.301 primary schools. The schools are then divided between 130 districts. Only 12 percent of the schools have educated teaches to take care of special teaching. Without help from outside it will be difficult for Tanzania to reach the development goals, which are – among others – to have at least one special Teacher at each primary school.
There is still far to go. But Anders Jacobsen is confident. The Government wants to cooperate, and IAS is welcome wherever they come.
- It was a Danish doctor, who started the Special teaching area in East Africa - Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. In 1983 Kurt Kristensen went to Kenya with support from Danida and started Kenya Institute of Special Education. It is exiting to be a Danish organization, which is now standing on the shoulders of this work. When we come, the locals say “We remember when doctor Kristensen was here. We remember his dreams… '

Picture at the top: Project coordinator Irene Shayo during a seminar in Singida in central Tanzania.

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