None
Categories:
  • Education
Status:
Completed
Completed On:
Mar 2025
Start Date:
May 2024
Cost:
$40,490

A Kitchen for Ufani Primary School

The Final project

 

Ufani Primary School is the origin story of Karimu. It was here that Marianne and Don were inspired to help the rural students in Tanzania in 2007 with a $500 donation to build 6 toilets. Since then Karimu has continued to pour love and energy into Ufani Primary with these many projects over the years. 

 

 

The last remaining project at the school is to build a school kitsch to serve the 474 students and teachers at the school. Part of the requirement for Karimu projects is that the community fund daily meals for all students. However, all these years, those meals have been cooked over open fires outdoors or in a tiny hut subjecting cooks and students to smoke and weather (see banner photo above).

 

Adults prepare grain for lunch

 

Regardless of the challenges, the Ufani community has consistently fed the students. See below their track record since January 2021 (which can be viewed on the Karimu Schools Dashboard).

 

 

In addition, Karimu requires regular and prompt maintenance of completed construction by the head of school and Ufani has consistently driven down the average days to fix 25 in 2023 and 23 in 2024!

 

Karimu is now able to build a kitchen for the school. Here is the site layout with the kitchen in blue.

 

 

The new kitchen will include three rooms: one for grain storage, one for cooking with four high efficiency stoves, and a covered serving area for protection from the weather.

Construction on the school officially began in May with the community arrinving the clear, level, and dig the foundation.

The community came together to clear and level the ground and dig the trenches for the foundation

 

The foundation takes shape and walls begin to go up

 

Walls, roofing, open air windows, and protected serving area take shape

 

Update March 2025: The construction on the Ufani kitchen project was halted in July 2024 when we discovered that their reports on teacher attendance were not accurate. We emphasize that Karimu values transparency and accuracy on their part and ours to sustain a strong partnership and maintain the trust of our donors. They committed to immediate improvements and we required them to sustain them for at least 6 months. Since then, reporting has been complete and accurate and construction resumed in 2025.

 

Construction is now complete. This marks the completion of all construction in the second school in Ayalagaya and is particularly sweet as it was Ufani that inspired Karimu's formation in the first place!

 

Interior views of the cooking, storage, and serving areas.

 

Exterior view of Ufani Primary kitchen

 

Children lining up for a meal in the new kitchen

 

Benefits:

  • Safety for cooks and children

 

Cost: 

  • Karimu cost: $37,509

  • Community cost and/or contribution: $2,981

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