Restrooms Renovation, Lyakirimu School, Tanzania

Catherine Njau has been teaching English at the Tanzanian Government, Mboni Secondary school, for 20 years. She is a motivated and experienced teacher who supports and encourages her students in learning English as a third language.

Catherine is a leader in the Tanzania EnglishLanguage Teachers’ Association (TELTA) where she serves as the Kilimanjaro region Coordinator and trains teachers. Apart from teaching English in one school, she teaches life skills and menstrual management hygiene in several schools in her region. She also produces and teaches girls to sew their own, reusable sanitary pads.

In 2022 Catherine Njau taught about 450 girls how to sew reusable sanitary pads, and established gardens in ten secondary schools. In her teaching experience, she found that many girls are not attending school during their periods. In response, she embarked on the production and provision of kits of reusable sanitary pads for the girls. Schools’ attendance by girls has increased significantly as a result.

In the Moshi District, there are about 100 government and private secondary schools. Currently, girls are not comfortable and may get strong pain, as they change their pads in those schools' bathrooms. Catherine's planned project for the year 2023 is to renovate the girls’ restrooms in these schools. She plans to make the government and other stakeholders aware that the girls need to have a special room where they can change pads comfortably and rest in cases where the period is not normal.

These activities had benefited from donations made to a fundraiser in which $3020 was collected. The fund supported a project in which Catherine collaborated with Dr. Heidi Ballard, Professor of Environmental Education, and Peggy Harte, M.Ed. from the University of California, Davis, where the team trained teachers in best practices for integrating the teaching of science and English language within school gardens.

Working in the KULEANA YOUTH EMPOWERMENT organization, she taught girls and boys about safe life at school. She administered the renovation of the two bathrooms in Lyakrimu secondary school, one for teachers in Maringeni secondary school's bathrooms, as well as the completion of the girl's dormitory building. Catherine also supported the acquisition of a photocopier machine for the Mboni secondary school.

Her plan for this year is to renovate restrooms in 20 government schools in the Moshi District. The renovation will start at the Lyakrimu Secondary school and will continue with the other nineteen. She is asking for support of 50000 USD for the first six months. A second round of donations will start in June to accomplish the target plan after receiving the first feedback and evaluation.