Zimbabwe: Maomba promotes community development through education
By Alfred Tembo – In a bid to promote and influence a radical change in the poverty stricken high densities of Gweru, Maomba School of Thoughts has vows to continue imparting academic skills to the college dropouts and the less privileged.
The school which was established over 7 years ago, in a 1 room rented apartment that the founding director also used as his place of residents, has grown over the years to emerge as one of Mambo high density suburbs’ notable home grown community project. The project today is boasts of nurturing a number of higher and tertiary graduates in various industrial boards.
In an interview with Shout-Africa.com, the college principal, Alack Maomba said the project was mainly targeted at curbing the increasing in anti-social activities in the high density suburbs.
“I had a vision of improving Gweru, but the resources have always been deterring me from pursuing my child hood dream. But this time it has been executed and will the results have already been showing”, he comments.
The college which was established by Midlands State University (MSU) student is the first school in the province to coin online tutorial which compiles the academic lessons that the college coach on compact discs.
“The idea of developing ICT informational CDs, was aimed at easing the learning burden on the side of the students. It makes the whole work a lot easy on both ends because the student will continuously have a referral point while the teacher will have ample time to explain on the topics to be covered.” said the youthful principal.
While hope curves the corner stone for inspiration, the community college has proven that voluntarism and social responsibilities by individuals in communities can contribute to the betterment of Zimbabwe.
Maomba said, “The College is in line with developing talents where there is no hope, hence we believe that if we work towards customizing technology in any form the students will grasp concepts that they can relate to in their life time.
In any case we need to be pro-active in creating change in the country, that burdening the government to do things that we can also do ourselves. ”
Team work has largely contributed to the expansion of the small but vibrant college.
“To make the vision come to life l had to share my idea with Tarisa Mudadigwa who is the college’s permanent secretary and Marylyn Girivara , the school’s executive secretary.”The college principal further commented.
However, the day and night school which is currently housed at Gweru Urban Vocational Training Centre (GUVTC) courtesy of Ministry of Youth and Empowerment is a brain child of Maomba. Maomba who graduated from MSU with a BCom Economics is looking forward to start constructions for the college soon following the City Council’s appreciation for the project.
