Imbaseni Primary

Imbaseni Primary School is in Imbaseni, a quiet rural Meru village situated just 25 kilometers from Arusha and 20 kilometers from Kilimanjaro Airport. A majority of the residents are small scale farmers or farm workers. 25% of the population is made up of children between the ages of 4 to 15 years old.

Current Conditions: Imbaseni Primary school serves 1,000 village children. However, due to its location, many children walk 4 hours to and from school every day.  With only 11 classrooms, many of the children study in shifts, outdoors, or in desperately overcrowded conditions. The school lacks electricity and running water, and has a 6 to 1 ratio of students to textbooks.

Defying the Odds: Despite the lack of basic infrastructure, Imbeseni Primary students consistently lead the region in academic performance on the national Secondary School entrance exam.  But even with their strong academic performance, many Imbaseni Primary graduates will never attend secondary school, simply because their parents cannot afford the school fees.

Bricks + Books Mission: Project Impact Imbaseni is a collective effort between the local community of Imbaseni and Bricks + Books Foundation. Our goal is to raise at least $60,000 to increase the infrastructure and quality of the school by:

Current Projects

Project Impact Imbaseni:

• Latrines: Our first goal under "Project Impact Imbaseni" is to build latrines at Imbaseni Primary School. The community members and school officials have expressed that the full capacity of the old latrines are an enormous heath risk for the 1,000 students that attend the school. Therefore, our first plan of action is for our country director to oversee the construction of 19 new latrines and work with the villagers to develop a plan of action to meet the needs of the community leaders.
• Cultural Tourism Business: After the construction of the latrines, the next priority is to provide seed funding to the community members who are working to grow a newly formed cultural tourism business. The cultural tourism program was initiated by the Imbaseni village community members who raised the initial funds needed to start the program. Our hiking routes are selected and designed to ensure comfort and safety. All local food and drinks offered, as part of the program, are prepared with struct hygiene standards. All guides and hosts are community members who were trained by volunteer professionals from the tourist industry. The revenues from the cultural tourism business will be divided between the school infrastructure fund and the community members. The school infrastructure fund will be matched by Bricks + Books to help the school construct new classrooms, purchase school supplies, stock the library, and provide teacher training.
• Micro-finance Opportunities: In addition to the cultural tourism business, Bricks + Books will provide seed funding to the Imbaseni mama's (women's) community group to micro-finance small businesses. These businesses will help the women generate extremely needed income for their families. An example of one of these small businesses is a poultry farm, which will not only provide food but also employment opportunities for women who have struggled to bring in income to their families. The poultry farm is an important business for rural communities because it provides scarce animal protein in the form of meat and eggs and allows the owners to sell the eggs or chickens to increase revenue.

Project 2010:

• Biodigestor: Bricks + Books is exploring the potential to collect and use bio-gas generated from the latrine waste at Imbaseni primary using a biodigester. A biodigester is a waste-management solution that traps methane, making it available for heating, cooking or even electricity generation. By preventing methane from venting freely into the atmosphere, biodigesters can help reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Further, such collection could provide an income stream to villages if such reductions qualify as offsets in U.S. climate change legislation.