Students are not necessarily the right people to run or build community resources. What we can offer is specialist knowledge, which can facilitate such development
- Kelvin Wong
A team of Cambridge students have begun a collaboration with people living in the slums of Dar es Salaam, aimed at road-testing ways for students to contribute meaningfully to improving lives in the developing world.
More than 30 students are travelling out to the Tanzanian city to set up four pilot projects as part of the new Cambridge Development Initiative. These include a plan to install the first sewer network in a community where cholera is often rife, and another to establish peer-to-peer learning in schools where class sizes are almost 100.
The longer-term aim, however, is to establish a blueprint for student volunteering which marks a step forward from what organisers describe as the traditional, “bricks-and-mortar” approach. Rather than sending students to developing countries to build one-off community facilities during their holidays, the Cambridge initiative will focus on training and skills development as well as infrastructure, kick-starting sophisticated development projects which can be sustained in the long term.
Set up in partnership with a Tanzanian organisation which works in 10 different city slums, the student-led initiative also hopes to create a lasting link between Cambridge and Dar es Salaam. The hope is that students will travel to the megacity every year, implementing and analysing different development initiatives which have been thoroughly researched and tested during the preceding months.
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Image: The student-led initiative will set up four projects in poor, overcrowded communities in Tanzania
Credit: CDI
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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