Mvumi School Trust

Congratulations to Sean Lambert on his fund raising Reading half marathon for Mvumi. Sean raised £561! He is a Classics master at Eton College and is deputy to the House Master in John Clark's former Boys' House, Timbralls, now run by John's successor, Andrew Robinson (they were best house in the the recent Mvumi swimathon). Sean is seen here in the School Yard with his dog called Sparky.

This is our most exciting new development. A Memorandum of Understanding confirming an agreement with the Government allows us to build a three-room dedicated space for blind or severely vision-impaired pupils from nearby Buigiri Primary School for the Blind. It gets outstanding results but secondary-level provision for blind students is very patchy, so we shall be taking very disadvantaged pupils – eight a year at first.

The project is due to the generosity of the Tanzanian Government and British corporation ICAP, to both of which we are indebted. The Government will provide three special teachers, Braille paper and maintenance plus eventual replacement of Braille machines. The corporate donor will provide the purpose-built classroom, new teacher accommodation and the Braille machines.

The school has benefited significantly from Eton College’s fundraising. The money from the 2007 Eton Action sponsored swim is earmarked for books, and is being spent over time. Funds to enable response to syllabus changes in this way are a great boon. Thank you very much, Eton swimmers! Thank you, too, to Hugo Frith and Laura Buxton for their imaginative sponsored ride and Sean Lambert for his sponsored half marathon.

Meanwhile at this moment Julian Raymond and son Paul have scaled Mount Kilimanjaro to raise more funds and the boys and their families of Caldicott Prep School have undertaken a sponsored walk on our behalf. Such efforts are so much appreciated.

The minibus is a tremendous asset. It does the monthly supplies trips to Dodoma, a great help given the rough 40 km road to the capital (which incidentally has just tarmacked its roads and installed street lamps for the first time), and was used for the staff outing.

Enjoyable field trips and more sports competitions can also now take place. Our latest fixture, in basketball, netball, volleyball and football, against the new St John’s University, was excellent.

The vehicle itself is a head-turner, less through aesthetics and more through its distinctive, desert tank appearance. Current conversion will increase passenger capacity.