| Buigiri School for the Blind, Dodoma, Tanzania |
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Buigiri School for the Blind is a primary school run by the Anglican Church in Dodoma, central Tanzania. It offers the only education available in the region for sight-impaired children - and the chances of pupils going on to secondary school depend on portable typewriters supplied by Workaid. Pupils at Buigiri are able to work in Braille but those who go on to the mainstream secondary schools have to submit all their work in typed form and provide their own typewriters, something most of them cannot afford. Brian Atkins, an advisor to the Bishop of Central Tanzania, first applied to Workaid on behalf of the school in January 2002. He said they urgently needed to replace the ancient manual typewriters which were used to teach touch-typing to the older pupils. Workaid sent ten manual typewriters for the final year students and 20 portable typewriters to be given to graduating students for their own use at secondary school.
The equipment was delivered in June 2002 and the photograph shows the first five graduates receiving their typewriters in October. A further 20 typewriters were dispatched in May 2003 and 25 more in August 2006, together with two Braille machines. In May 2007, Brian Atkins emailed us with news of the students' achievements. In 2006, Buigiri gained the sixth best results for pupils completing primary education out of 13,000 primary schools in the whole country. One former pupil has recently gained a university place and two other pupils have qualified as teachers and have just taken up posts in secondary schools in Dodoma. In Tanzania's recent National Para Games for disabled children, Buigiri pupils won seven gold medals, five silver and two bronze. They are now waiting to hear whether any of them have been selected to compete for their country in the Pan African Para Games held in Nigeria in November.
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PROJECT REPORT
