THE FINDINGS OF THE ADAPT PROJECT IN TANZANIA.

 

By, Hamad Rashid: The Adapting assessment into policy and learning (ADAPT): Adolescent 21^st Century Skills project, which aims to stimulate the use of evidence for 21st century Life Skills Assessment, has helped to facilitate the start of debates on improving the methods of measuring Life Skills in East Africa.

This was discussed deeply at the ADAPT Project Tanzania National Advisory Committee meeting, held end of July, in the Zanzibar Islands with the aim of providing feedback on the findings of activities, which has implemented in two years.

The Executive Director of the Zanzibar Institute of Education, Abdalla Mohamed Mussa interviewed by Tanzania Kids Time after the Meeting said, “If you talk about 21st Century Life Skills is a very important issue for our children and youth, the entire country in mainland Tanzania and the Islands are currently in the process of reviewing the Education Curriculum to include these issues, and we are not really late, it’s very important  the universities and our college curriculums to acquire these skills, as the students when they go to school they can teach these techniques to our children. The ADAPT project has come at the right time to help us in this and we are very grateful to Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GESCI)."

       Abdalla Mohamed mussa: The Executive Director of the Zanzibar Institute of Education.

One of the Members of the ADAPT Advisory Committee in Tanzania, who is a youth Member of Parliament from Singida Region, Mainland Tanzania and Member of the Standing Committee on Education, Culture, Arts and Sports in the Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania, Nusrati Hanje had the opportunity to participate in the Meeting and when she was interviewed by the press, she praised the findings of the project.

Nusrati Hanje said, "The ADAPT project is very important for our Tanzanian youth, because the world today needs to have people with innovative ideas, to be creators, and have the necessary information to interact with the community and to stimulate development. The project has also reached out to many groups such as policymakers, lawmakers, including myself and through the review of our Education curriculum, I have shared ideas on how we can improve this area and that ideas I derived from the positive results of the ADAPT Project”.

The ADAPT Project which is being implemented in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, there were also lessons, as she said Dr. Maryam Jaffar Ismail lecture at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and the ADAPT knowledge champion in Tanzania “By implementing this project, we have learned that the learning assessment, it is very different from the final exams”.

Dr. Maryam added that, “We have been successful because we have conducted surveys, in three countries, namely Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, and each country has conducted these surveys, to see that, what we can learn, can help us in shaping policy”.

                         Dr. Maryam Jaffar Ismail: ADAPT Knowledge Champion in Tanzania.

As the focus of the ADAPT Project, to improve policies, curricula and guidelines for building youth with 21st Century Skills, Tanzania Project Manager Ramadhani Matimbwa he further explained, the meeting which gathered delegates from Tanzania and Kenya.

Ramdhani said, “We had gathered together stakeholders, who we call members of the Project Advisory Committee, today's meeting has been a little bigger because, it is the meeting that we expected to be the meeting Completing the main activities of the Project, so what is going on now is a small task. If you look at the big part, the stakeholders have seen the importance of these debates, these debates have been very fruitful because, the information we provide many stakeholders have seen is true, and needs to continue to be worked on, and continue to discuss in depth”.

Ramadhani added, “So, what we've learned is people really need to continue these discussions. So, let's continue to discuss in detail, to see how we are advancing, the various policy improvements and ways we can help our young people, but we have also seen great progress during this period of time that we have done this project, for example, we have organized a learning community, In this learning community, we have been able to organize up to the online platform, which has over sixty members, who can contribute ideas, and continue to discuss various policy matters”.

Director of the Department of Youth Development from the Ministry of Information, Youth, Culture and Sport Shaib Ibrahim Muhamed explained how they used ADAPT Project data to develop plans to help young people in Zanzibar and Tanzania acquire life skills.

The Director Shaibu he said, “Now, it has been a great opportunity through this project, to be able to bring together various stakeholders in Tanzania, and to be able to discuss the whole issue of the context of Life Skills, but how do we implement these Life Skills on the Tanzanian side. For us, as the Ministry of Education, we have been able to help us do a review, of the Life Skills manual, which we are currently in the final stage, to complete, that Life Skills manual, but one of the things that has helped us is the information and data that we have obtained, through this ADAPT Project”.

The Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) representative in Tanzania Gaudence Kapinga explained the results he saw from the ADAPT Project.

 “ADAPT is one of the RELI Project, which has been able to do very great things, especially in two areas, enabling our members to be able to use, the results of assessment, but also to empower, the members of RELI being able to meet with policymakers, and tell them what exactly is happening, in the search for data, to be able to use those data in improvement, various policy issues, number one, this is in building the capacity to use the data, but number two, using those data, to ensure that needing to use them especially the Policymakers, they take them for granted, these data have been able, to be received in a very large space,   why because! it is a place that is so often, we have not been able to have data, which leads us to which policies should be”.  Said Kapinga.

                                     Gaudence Kapinga: The (RELI) facilitator in Tanzania.

 The ADAPT project is implemented by the Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GESCI) in collaboration with Makerere University and University of Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GCDWC) with support from the international Development Research Centre (IDRC) under the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge Innovation Exchange (GPE-KIX) Programme.