Aang Serian Community College, 2002-2004
As the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) programme was developed and tested out with groups of urban youth, and gained international recognition through a 2003 United Nations Environment Programme report, a new vision began to emerge for Aang Serian.
The Village Chairman of the remote Maasai village of Eluwai (Lesikar’s home village) offered a plot of land to build a community education centre, where the IK course could be taught to rural teenagers alongside basic literacy classes and English language.
Launched in 2004 with five students and a teacher under the shade of a tree, Aang Serian Community College (as it was then known) grew very quickly, and soon there were two octagonal timber-frame classrooms, plastered with mud and cement.
But the students soon started demanding more. They didn’t just want to learn to read and write, they wanted to be fully prepared for secondary school…then they wanted to be at secondary school, but there wasn’t a single secondary school in any of the four villages that make up the Monduli Juu area!
There could only be one answer. With assistance from the Britain-Tanzania Society’s Tanzania Development Trust and other donors, building started in earnest: a staff house, two new classrooms, and an administration block.
