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Social Awareness Organization Background

• Founded by a group of young (in their 20’s) people in Kiembe-Samaki, a neighbourhood in Zanzibartown.
• The executive is a mix of Christians and Muslims, but their clients are largely Muslim (Zanzibar is 99% Muslim)
• Work began in 2004, but they finalized their constitution and became registered only in July 2006
• The founders are mostly male, mostly pursuing post-secondary studies.  Two have finished teacher’s college. One is studying journalism; one science; one geography. All are committed to using their time to help others and improve the conditions of life in Zanzibar, but they also have a sense of fun.
• They are learning about being an NGO as they go, and will start to look for funding opportunities and write proposals soon.

SAO has the broad goal of addressing social development in Zanzibar, but has three main areas of activity:

• Education.  The goal is to empower people by helping them to achieve the exam results required for further education which, in turn, leads to better employment and better citizenship. They currently deliver after school tutoring to students in Form 2 and Form 4.  There are national exams at the end of these grades and they are often challenging.  The volunteers lecture, give assignments, and coach participants in these sessions from about 6:00 to 9:00 every weekday evening.  They also have a special class for some adult soldiers who wish to improve their literacy.  In addition, they are taking over delivery of a charity English class. Their first groups write the exams this November and we are anxious to see their success rate.  They use a community facility which they rent from the local elders, and hope to provide free tuition soon; right now they charge a small fee to help with the rent.
  
• The Environment.  The goal is to preserve the environment and increase awareness of the importance of preserving the environment. The first project in this area is a small nursery, donated by a minister who is the father of two members, where they are growing trees to transplant to coastal areas where erosion is a problem and to public areas where greenery and shade are required.  They are also working with the local community council to install garbage cans (there are about 5 in all of Zanzibar -- people just toss their trash anywhere when they are away from home and, when they have enough at home, burn the garbage) in a number of places in their community and arrange for weekly collection and removal to a landfill site.  They want to start educating children to be more careful, especially with the plastic bags that litter every area in Zanzibar.  The third project in the works is to get some unused land granted to them to establish a park for their community to allow people an outdoor meeting place.  Finally, they are looking into finding a buyer for used cans (there is no recycling at present in Zanzibar) and will work with hotels and other businesses to gather their recyclable waste and sell it, to support the NGO and to clean up the environment.
  
• HIV/AIDS Education and Reduction.  HIV/AIDS is not yet the devastating health and social issue that it is in other parts of Africa but it is poised to become a problem as the society becomes more open and more tourists and mainlanders visit.  SAO has observed that there is more spending to prevent HIV/AIDS but while the prevention training has increased, so has the incidence in the population.  They figure the training must be ineffective.  They propose to, first, take more training themselves on HIV/AIDS and, then, to hold events such as sports days which will attract youths and slip in some HIV/AIDS awareness training, youth to youth.  In Zanzibar, talking about sex is verboten as a general rule, so parents don’t discuss possible extramarital sex with their kids and teachers cannot talk so freely as they can here, either, even though sex ed is in the curriculum.