In the heart of Kisarawe, Tanzania, the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa Congregation is breathing new life into their mission and sowing the seeds of hope and knowledge in a community thirsting for education. Their story is a testament to the positive impact that the Sisters Blended Value Project (SBVP) is realizing across the region (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia).
Before the Sisters Blended Value Project, the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa faced a unique challenge. They possessed a building that had remained abandoned for six years. Initially intended for transformation evening classes, this structure lay dormant and incomplete due to financial constraints. It symbolized untapped potential, a silent testament to the limitations that hindered the congregation from fulfilling their religious vision.
The turning point in their journey arrived when they participated in the SBVP training, a comprehensive Programme implemented by Strathmore University Business School in collaboration with ACWECA. During this training, the sisters were equipped with diverse skills, ranging from marketing, networking, record-keeping, fund sourcing, report writing, and bookkeeping to leadership. This training ignited the spark of transformation.
As has been the norm of the SBVP facilitators, the sisters were challenged to initiate a social enterprise that would benefit their congregation and create a lasting impact on their community. This challenge impelled the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa to think about how they could use the building to satisfy the educational needs of the Kisarawe community in Tanzania.
With newfound knowledge from the training on social entrepreneurship and unwavering determination, the sisters teamed up with mentors and coaches from Strathmore University to set a plan to ensure that the sisters’ social enterprise became sustainable. The sisters presented their vision to the Mother Superior, who recognized the potential of their vision and agreed to support the project.
Upon completing the Programme and presenting their proposal for the social business enterprise, their dedication bore fruit. They secured seed capital from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation through SBS, a vital lifeline judiciously employed to equip the Gerard Grondin Memorial Pre and Primary School with state-of-the-art learning resources, catapulting the school into the league of modern educational institutions.
In January 2023, the Gerard Grondin Memorial School welcomed its first pupils, with six children enrolling in the pre-primary section. Putting into action the marketing skills learned at Strathmore University, words quickly spread, and children began transferring from other local schools to the Gerard Grondin Memorial School. By June of the same year, the school had experienced remarkable growth, with 24 children in its classrooms. The local community is continually knocking on its doors, seeking opportunities for their children.
The sisters now face a race against time, striving to complete the new building to house the grade one students. The demand for quality education, once an unmet need, now fuels the rapid expansion of the school. The Immaculate Heart Sisters are flooded with inquiries, and their vision of creating a sustainable social enterprise is rapidly becoming a reality. Their mission, aligning perfectly with the congregation’s charism – the Convention of the African Continent – envisions achieving sustainability through education and evangelization.
The Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa are rewriting their narrative and reshaping the future of Kisarawe, one child at a time. This is a reverberation, a big echo that one’s thought of SBVP’s mission of transforming social ministries into sustainable social enterprises is not only possible but also inevitable.
Article by Alex Okoth
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