Kigamboni, Tanzania

Photographer: Mark Tipple

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition)

Though its Drop Out school programme has closed, the Kigamboni Community Centre continues to offer activities such as dancing, acrobatics, drama and sewing to young people from nearby villages.

Jackson, 16, once thought he would never get an education. Though he was enrolled in school, his family made him work selling soap at a local market. Eventually he went to stay with an aunt who took him to Kigamboni Community Centre’s Drop Out School. After just one year, Jackson passed the entrance exams that allowed him to return to mainstream schooling. Now, he is top of his class.

Nassoro Mkwesso and three friends set up Kigamboni Community Centre in 2007 to help children who had dropped out of school find a way back to education. Over the next four years, the centre’s volunteer teachers had a near-100%- success rate for the several hundred students who went through their Drop Out School and its programme of maths, Swahili and English. But in 2011 the Tanzanian government told Nassoro and his colleagues to stop offering courses because none of the centre’s staff were qualified teachers. For a short period, the classes were continued nearby using qualified staff. But the cost proved too much. In 2013, the Drop Out School programme was finally shut down. Once again, children in the area who had dropped out of school have little prospect of ever completing their education.