Karibuni Choba! Welcome to Choba!
Children of Choba was registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales in 2010 (Reg. no. 1138096) to help the many bright and beautiful children in Choba and the surrounding villages have a better start in life. Our main task is to subsidise and run Choba English Medium Primary and Nursery Schools where we aim to provide the highest possible standards of teaching and facilities. Unlike most Tanzanian primary schools which teach in Swahili, we teach in English. All Tanzanian secondary schools teach in English from the very first day, and consequently many bright students drop out early on because they just don’t understand the language. The aim of our school is to provide the best possible primary education in English so the children are in a position to fulfill their academic potential when they get to secondary school. We find sponsors to enable the most academically gifted Choba graduates from low income households to attend some of the top secondary schools in Tanzania. We also try to help as many of our O level leavers as we can to gain vocational training at college if they are not selected for A levels.
Location
Choba is a small hamlet on the coast of northern Tanzania in Pangani District, Tanga Region. It has an adult population of just over 300 with the majority struggling to survive way below the poverty line by subsistence farming and fishing. This area is at least 50 years, in development terms, behind the better known parts of Tanzania such as Arusha and Dar es Salaam.
Children of Choba Primary and Nursery School - Impact
Choba Nursery School opened in 2008 and Class 1 of our primary school started a year later. We added a classroom every year until our final seventh classroom opened in January 2015. After our first 7 years of having a complete school we are now firmly established in the top 5% of all primary schools in Tanzania despite doing the exams in English (which is obviously much harder for the children) and being in one of the least developed districts. Our students are now consistently being selected for Tanzanian Special Schools such as Ilboru and Msalato. These are government schools only for the very brightest students in the country.
The aim of our school is already being fulfilled. Our founder members who started at Choba Nursery School in 2008 and Choba Primary School in 2009 (under a tree!) sat their A levels in May 2022. Their results are fantastic! Ten of the twenty eight who finished at Choba in 2015 have good enough results to qualify them for a place at university for subjects such as Medicine, Engineering, Law and Education! Eight of these were sponsored by Children of Choba for their secondary education and without doubt would not have achieved these results without our help as they come from extremely challenging home environments. Six of the eight sponsored students are girls, which is especially pleasing as in Pangani the culture is for girls to become teenage mothers. They are all in the process of applying for university courses and loans.
Three years of Choba graduates have completed their O levels up to now and the results prove the value of the foundation they have received at primary level. Last year (2021) all 23 students who graduated from Choba Primary School in 2017 passed their O levels (nationally, 12.7% failed). 78% of Choba graduates got Divisions I, II and III compared with 35% in Tanzania as a whole, and 30% got Division I (usually this is about 5% nationally).
At Children of Choba Primary and Nursery School we are offering a very high class education at minimal cost to the parents. Just 25% of the 284 students at Choba Primary School pay full fees of TZS 460,000 (£170) a year, mostly children of government workers from Pangani Town. Parents from the villages pay 25-75% of this, depending on their ability to pay. Orphans, those who are HIV positive and those with extremely challenging home lives pay nothing. The shortfall is met by Children of Choba.
Choba village