TEAA

I wanted to write a quick note about one of the organizations I have been in touch with.  It is called TEAA (http://cs.gmu.edu/~henryh/TEAA/) and stands for Teachers for East Africa Alumni. 

 Based on my understanding, back in the 1960's, right after the East African nations gained independence, the United States and England ran a program that sent people to teach in these nations for several years.  This all pre-dated the peace corps.  Many taught for several years and came back, while I believe a few stayed.

Recently in 2003, the alumni from this program, which number several hundred, got together to form an organization that would help the schools they were at, using the contacts they still have there.  They now help several schools in the East Africa area.

This organization seems particularly interesting for Educate! because of the alumni's great combined knowledge of both schools and people in the area.  They are very well connected, especially in Uganda, and have a TEAA member, Fawn Cousens, oversee their programming.  I am very much looking forward to reaching out to Fawn and visiting some of the TEAA supported schools.  I think learning from their experience in Uganda and knowledge of the educational landscape there will be of extreme benefit to us.  Perhaps even going forward Educate! and TEAA can find a way to work together.

As a side note, it's probably worth mentioning that I am very much a proponent of collaboration, and thus reach out and explore such opportunities wherever I can.  I think even in the non-profit world, economies of scale can be reached and organizations doing work similar to ours, which are typically very small and volunteer run, can benefit from working together and pooling resources.  If anyone has any thoughts on this, please comment.