Education for girls in Tanzania

The IDUNA Foundation has been financially supporting the Barbro Johansson Model Girl's School in Tanzania for several years. It is a boarding school that offers high-quality secondary education for girls. The students perform well and the school is ranked academically among the best in the country. 3,500 young girls have graduated from Barbro School to date. When the school was founded 25 years ago by the Tanzanian non-profit organization JOHA Trust, very few girls in Tanzania had access to higher education, and education in state schools was generally of low quality. JOHA Trust therefore started its initiative to promote quality education for girls in Tanzania. The goal was to start schools that offered good education to talented girls regardless of social or religious background and to serve as a model, inspiration and a good example. Today, JOHA Trust runs two schools, Barbro School outside Dar es Salaam and, for a few years, also a school in Bukoba, in northern Tanzania.

The fund and the school are named after the Swedish missionary Barbro Johansson who came to Tanzania in 1949. She was an inspiring teacher and admired principal, an active member of society, who during the colonial era supported the movement for Tanzania to become an independent country, became a member of parliament and always fought for girls' education.

The Barbro School started in 2000 under simple conditions with 40 girls in primitive conditions. Today the school has more than 500 students, qualified teachers and good classrooms, laboratories, library, canteen, dormitories etc.

Scholarships are given to girls from families who cannot afford to pay school fees. Money has been collected by the Swedish support organization JOHAfonden, which has financially supported Barbro students since the school started. The IDUNA Foundation channels its support through the JOHAfonden and has made it possible for a large number of girls from poor families to receive an education that would otherwise not have been available to them.