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Bibi Jann Children's Care Trust…Helping Tanzanian AIDS orphans and the grandmothers who care for them toward a better life!
   

About Bibi Jann School

Bibi Jann School Needs
The School That Love Built
 
 
 

About Bibi Jann School

During her first trip to Tanzania, East Africa in February 2001, Jann met Fatuma Gwao, divorced, Muslim mother of four who ran a pre-school for 13 tots - sans any supplies - in her three-room home in the suburban village of Mbagala. Jann was so touched by the bright students and their lack of playthings that she immediately went back to town and purchased a few toys and books.

 
Bibi Jann Day Care Centre in Tanzania

Bricks a few hands high in Fatuma's dirt yard outlined her dream: a real pre-school. Jann took photos and showed them to everyone she met back home in Portland, Oregon and asked for donations. The fund grew, and when she and Eric Sandström married in both the U.S. and Sweden, they asked for school donations in lieu of gifts.

Students moved into the two classrooms (the smaller for 5- and 6-year-olds, the larger for 2-4-year-olds) in 2002. The school supplies 70+ children ages 2-6 (many of them AIDS orphans) with two meals a day and snacks (the only food some children get) and a pre-school education --including English --which is prompting graduates to excel in primary school.

A first grade classroom opened in January 2006 with 10 students and space for 20 more. The students learn in English and use computers donated by KPMG.

In under five years with individual, corporate and charity donations, the school has become a walled "campus" with running water, electricity, septic tank and water storage tank. It includes an office, kitchen, computer room, GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA meeting room, orphans' bedroom and Fatuma's home. Community meetings and adult classes are held there, benefiting the village.

Two of Fatuma's daughters are training as teachers, while her son, Dixon Pyuza, administers the school. Fatuma now heads the GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA project.

Bibi Jann reads to first and second graders. March 2007
Busy slide. April 2006
 
Children play with dolls. March 2007
Children have fun with legos.
March 2007
Children eats with their hands here.
February 2007
Child writes a letter to U.S.A.
March 2007

 © 2006 Bibi Jann Children's Care Trust. All Rights Reserved.