In September last year we conducted some research into the possible benefit of providing whiteboards for the five secondary schools that our sponsored pupils attend. None of the schools have whiteboards, in fact we have yet to come across a government secondary school in Tanzania that has a whiteboard – they all have blackboards, many of which are in a quite unacceptable condition. The teachers that we spoke to were extremely enthusiastic about the idea, and when we visited an adult education centre at Meserani, who had one small whiteboard, they spoke very positively about the benefits of their whiteboard over the blackboards that they had.

We arranged with three of our secondary schools over Christmas for them to trial one whiteboard each, looking in particular at the potential costs of maintaining a supply of coloured whiteboard marker pens. We brought a selection of marker pens with us from the U.K., and bought a selection from a supplier in Tanzania, and asked the teachers to trial both sets of pens and report back to us if there was any significant difference.

It was a genuine pleasure to deliver one whiteboard each to Moita School, Kipok School and Einoti School – one of which was funded by Andrew Ford, the pharmacist at Morrisons, Teesside Park. The teachers were delighted with their new resource, and extremely excited about the prospect of using them in their classrooms. The pupils were also eager to see the whiteboards – something that they had never seen before.