Help Tanzanian Youth Make Tech to Help Themselves

Hi Twende Family,

I am delighted to write to you and update you with what has been happening at Twende. I hope that you and your families are healthy and keeping safe.

In this quarter, through your support, Twende was able to reach out to 80+ people from different parts of Arusha who attended different programs at different times.

Our programs have been diverse in many ways. We have gone beyond the walls of our makerspace (karakana) and we have been able to reach people in rural Tanzania as well. We have conducted 3 programs outside the Twende workshop that have been fruitful and a huge relief to the participants who were unable to visit the makerspace but the Makerspace also played its usual magic and hosted many programs, participants and visitors and in one way or the other given birth to impressive technologies made from the Creative Capacity Building Workshops, Build-It workshops, the Jamii Technology program and technical mentoring and advice.

We reached out to 25 secondary students through Dorcas, our partner organization working to help local youths by providing opportunities to learn different things to sustain their lives. This group got to learn how to build a bottle opener from a recycled piece of flat bar and made something they can add value and turn it into a business. Apart from making the bottle opener, they also got recycling ideas by seeing what others have done in terms of rubbish recycling, for example, the spirit stove made out of soda cans, flashlight out of recycled water bottles, and blackboard duster from small pieces of wood etc.

Thereafter, we conducted a Creative Capacity Building workshop which invited youths from different parts from Arusha, including some from the Arusha Technical College, as well as community members who joined to share ideas and get to build useful and workable prototypes which are to solve community challenges. This gave the students the opportunity to practice what they learnt in school by putting into reality and also the community and local youths learnt from them through sharing knowledge.

This quarter has been so fruitful that we have piloted the long-awaited Tech Incubation Program where we have started developing 3 prototypes into successful and saleable products. In this pilot, 3 technologies are undergoing prototyping and testing where the champions are teamed with young passionate professionals who'll work together to bridge the technology gap and eventually build a final product.

Apart from calendar programs, we also participated in some big exhibitions including Nanenane which was of great success as we reached many potential people who showed interest in our programs.

In terms of inspiring innovation, we hosted a chapter meeting which aimed to reunite all the Twende alumni to get to know and learn from each other whereby almost all of our innovators shared their progress and success stories and also got feedback on areas of improvement.

Twende also had a role to play in slowing the spread of COVID-19 where we made and donated 10 tippy taps to different public spaces and the project is still up on GlobalGiving (https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/support-local-tech-to-slow-the-spread-of-covid-19/) please support this project to strengthen public hygiene and slow the spread of COVID-19.

Through continuous support, we have been able to go beyond our makerspace walls and beyond our expectation. it is through your contribution that we are getting closer to our vision of more local technological solutions to local challenges. 

Thank you so much (Asante Sana)!

Nzira and the Twende team