THE FINDINGS OF THE ADAPT PROJECT IN TANZANIA.

This was discussed deeply at the
ADAPT Project Tanzania National Advisory Committee meeting, held end of July,
in the Zanzibar Islands with the aim of providing feedback on the findings of
activities, which has implemented in two years.

The Executive Director of the Zanzibar
Institute of Education, Abdalla Mohamed Mussa interviewed by Tanzania Kids Time
after the Meeting said, “If you
talk about 21st Century Life Skills is a very important issue for our children
and youth, the entire country in mainland Tanzania and the Islands are
currently in the process of reviewing the Education Curriculum to include these
issues, and we are not really late, it’s very important  the universities and our college curriculums to
acquire these skills, as the students when they go to school they can teach
these techniques to our children. The ADAPT project has come at the right time
to help us in this and we are very grateful to Global e-Schools and Communities
Initiative (GESCI).”

       Abdalla Mohamed mussa: The Executive Director of the
Zanzibar Institute of Education.

One of the Members of the ADAPT
Advisory Committee in Tanzania, who is a youth Member of Parliament from
Singida Region, Mainland Tanzania and Member of the Standing Committee on
Education, Culture, Arts and Sports in the Parliament of the United Republic of
Tanzania, Nusrati Hanje had the opportunity to participate in the Meeting and
when she was interviewed by the press, she praised the findings of the project.

Nusrati Hanje said, “The ADAPT project is very important
for our Tanzanian youth, because the world today needs to have people with
innovative ideas, to be creators, and have the necessary information to
interact with the community and to stimulate development. The project has also
reached out to many groups such as policymakers, lawmakers, including myself
and through the review of our Education curriculum, I have shared ideas on how
we can improve this area and that ideas I derived from the positive results of
the ADAPT Project”.

The ADAPT
Project which is being implemented in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, there were
also lessons, as she said Dr. Maryam Jaffar Ismail lecture at the
State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and the ADAPT knowledge champion in Tanzania “By implementing this project, we have
learned that the learning assessment, it is very different from the final exams”.

Dr. Maryam added
that, “We have been successful
because we have conducted surveys, in three countries, namely Tanzania, Kenya
and Uganda, and each country has conducted these surveys, to see that, what we
can learn, can help us in shaping policy”.

                         Dr.
Maryam Jaffar Ismail: ADAPT Knowledge Champion in Tanzania.

As the focus
of the ADAPT Project, to improve policies, curricula and guidelines for
building youth with 21st Century Skills, Tanzania Project Manager Ramadhani Matimbwa
he further explained, the meeting which gathered delegates from Tanzania and
Kenya.

Ramdhani said,
“We had gathered together stakeholders,
who we call members of the Project Advisory Committee, today’s meeting has been
a little bigger because, it is the meeting that we expected to be the meeting
Completing the main activities of the Project, so what is going on now is a
small task. If you look at the big part, the stakeholders have seen the
importance of these debates, these debates have been very fruitful because, the
information we provide many stakeholders have seen is true, and needs to
continue to be worked on, and continue to discuss in depth”.

Ramadhani
added, “So, what we’ve learned is people
really need to continue these discussions. So, let’s continue to discuss in
detail, to see how we are advancing, the various policy improvements and ways
we can help our young people, but we have also seen great progress during this
period of time that we have done this project, for example, we have organized a
learning community, In this learning community, we have been able to organize
up to the online platform, which has over sixty members, who can contribute
ideas, and continue to discuss various policy matters”.

Director of
the Department of Youth Development from the Ministry of Information, Youth,
Culture and Sport Shaib Ibrahim Muhamed explained how they used ADAPT Project
data to develop plans to help young people in Zanzibar and Tanzania acquire
life skills.

The Director
Shaibu he said, “Now, it has been a great opportunity through
this project, to be able to bring together various stakeholders in Tanzania,
and to be able to discuss the whole issue of the context of Life Skills, but
how do we implement these Life Skills on the Tanzanian side. For us, as the
Ministry of Education, we have been able to help us do a review, of the Life
Skills manual, which we are currently in the final stage, to complete, that
Life Skills manual, but one of the things that has helped us is the information
and data that we have obtained, through this ADAPT Project”.

The Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI)
representative in Tanzania Gaudence Kapinga explained the results he saw from
the ADAPT Project.

 “ADAPT is one of the RELI Project, which has
been able to do very great things, especially in two areas, enabling our
members to be able to use, the results of assessment, but also to empower, the
members of RELI being able to meet with policymakers, and tell them what
exactly is happening, in the search for data, to be able to use those data in
improvement, various policy issues, number one, this is in building the
capacity to use the data, but number two, using those data, to ensure that
needing to use them especially the Policymakers, they take them for granted,
these data have been able, to be received in a very large space,   why
because! it is a place that is so often, we have not been able to have data,
which leads us to which policies should be”.  Said Kapinga.

                                     Gaudence
Kapinga: The (RELI) facilitator in Tanzania.

 The ADAPT project is implemented by the Global e-Schools and Communities
Initiative (GESCI) in collaboration with Makerere University and University of
Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GCDWC) with
support from the international Development Research Centre (IDRC) under the Global
Partnership for Education Knowledge Innovation Exchange (GPE-KIX) Programme.