PBH African Project Needs Funds, Chooses New Name and Leadership

PBH's African teaching project has chosen a new name, selected new leaders, and is going to a new country, but the five-year-old program faces the same old problem: raising money.

With less than three months remaining before the project's ten teachers leave for East Africa, slightly more than half of the $22,000 needed to finance the program has been raised. Christopher St. John '66, co-leader of the group, said last night that the project has less than $1000 in cash and has pledges for $11,000 to $15,000 more.

Now called Volunteer Teachers for Africa, the project sends ten to twelve Harvard and Radcliffe students to teach for a year in secondary schools and refugee camps in Tanzania. St. John explained that the group, formerly known as Project Tanganyika, changed its name this year, partly because of Tanganyika's own name change and partly because two VTA teachers will be working in the newly-independent country of Zambia.

Confident of Money

St. John feels confident that this year's budget will be met. For the past four years, he said, the project has been far short of its goal in the spring, but has managed to raise the necessary funds before its June departure. The group relies on contributions from families, foundations, and individual donors for its support.

Members of Volunteer Teachers for Africa have undertaken an extensive orientation program, including three hours a week of Swahill lessons. Swahili, a mixture of Arabic and the Bantu languages, is the official language of Tanzania, as well as a lingua-franca spoken extensively throughout East Africa.

In addition to Swahill, the volunteers practice teaching skills and are studying current African affairs. The teachers--six men and four women--and PBH officials chose St. John and Elise Forbes '65 as its leaders earlier this month.

In addition to the two volunteers going to Zambia, three students will work in a special school for refugees from southern Africa, located in Dar as Salaam. Others will teach in regular Tanzanian schools, and one has been chosen to serve as sociology tutor at Kirukoni College, a government-sponsored center for leadership training.