Arri’s schoolchildren need new bathrooms
Give now so Karimu can build new school bathrooms in Arri Ward
About the campaign
Clean bathrooms aren’t glamorous, but they’re necessary — and in the schools of rural Tanzania, clean bathrooms make surprising and significant contributions to academic success. We shall refrain from graphic descriptions of the bathrooms now in use at Dohom Primary, Dudiye, Tsaayo Primary, and Jangwani schools, in Arri Ward, in the Babati District of Tanzania’s Manyara Region. You might be eating while you read this, and we don’t want to spoil your appetite! We’ll content ourselves with telling you that the bathrooms in these schools are so old, ramshackle, and filthy that many students will go through an entire school day without using them. Needless to say, this can be a major obstacle to focusing on assignments. However, there are other repercussions: high rates of urinary tract infections, leading to missed school days. These problems affect both boys and girls, but older girls face an additional challenge: the old bathrooms that Karimu wants to replace have no facilities for girls who are on their periods, so missing a few days of school per month is par even for those who succeed in avoiding UTI’s.
But the modern bathrooms that Karimu wishes to build will include facilities for menstruating girls, as well as incinerators for the safe disposal of pads, and, of course, sinks with running water to enable all the children to wash their hands. Karimu has already built modern bathrooms for all of the schools in Arri Ward’s next door neighbor, Ayalagaya Ward, so we know what these bathrooms did for schoolchildren there: they suffered fewer illnesses, came to school more often, and did better in their studies.
Building bathrooms for four schools will cost a total of $240,000. But because the Tanzanian government has already given Karimu $60,000 to do this work, our need is for another $180,000. Bathrooms are simple. Bathrooms are humble. But there’s nothing humble about the achievements they make possible. And something other than humility — pride — will be the appropriate sentiment for donors who help Karimu build new school bathrooms for Dohom Primary, Dudiye, Tsaayo Primary, and Jangwani schools.
