At our school there are different initiatives led by students and class projects which have established over the last years. As "Giving Back" is part of our vision, we love to give back to the local community and to international projects.
Amongst other projects the school’s community thus campaigns for social projects in Dresden and Tanzania.
Since more than 10 years we are supporting the Bakita Girls Organisation in Ifakara (Tanzania) that was founded by our alumni Patricia Schneidewind.
The main aim of the charity is to support girls through secondary school to obtain qualifications in Tanzania. The initiative has already 34 girls being supported and 2 are now studying at university. We are very grateful that a few DIS families are financing some girl's university education including school fee, living costs and insurance. Faiza, who received a scholarship from Bakita Girls, graduated from university in July 2021. She studied rural development is now starting as a coordinator at the new built community center.
The initiative is now to build a community centre. This centre will allow the young women to be taught English and other key subjects for their well being and future. English is important as the exams are in English and provision is not an emphasis in Primary schools. We at DIS want to support this initiative as it is excellent charity and it reflects our philosophy on international mindedness a key principle of DIS.
VIDEOS:
If you click HERE, you can watch a video about the project. Or click HERE and you will get a tour through the community center.
The Two Wings School provides primary education in English to financially deprived families in Iringa, Tanzania. Our fundraising project has been initiated by our Spanish teacher Mrs Alexia Uhia, who worked and lived in Iringa and knows the school director personally. In the past we raised funds for the school building and were collecting educational materials. In March 2020 we welcomed Eva Ndongolo who works as a primary teacher at Two Wings. Her visit for professional development was financed by donations. Unfortunately, Two Wings lost the permission to run the Primary school section because of insufficient land in 2020. To regain the primary school certification from the Tanzanian government they need to invest on a plot of land of three acres, which will cost around 8,000 Euros. We are now raising funds to support the school's goal to become a primary school. Early March, two Grade 11 students organized a family quiz night and raised 1,098 euros. What a success! Please read more about the project on their website or donate directly on GoFundMe.
If you need more details, please send an email to talaki[at]dresden-is.de.
Come Together
Talaki is a DIS community project initiated by DIS teachers, students and parents to support the integration of refugees. The Arabic word Talaki means 'Come Together'. The aim is to create a friendly and welcoming environment for local refugee families to get to know the international community at DIS through joint activities, e.g. play music together, games, sports and many more. The DIS Talaki team organized events at school and outside of DIS such as the Benefit Concert “Talaki Rocks” at the Dresden Musikhochschule or the charity run “Talaki Runs!” in the Waldpark.
Every Christmas we are collecting toys and clothes for the Dresden Refugee Center.
The TALAKI project was nominated for the "Sächsischer Bürgerpreis" (Saxon Citizen Award) in the category "Engagement in der Schule für Demokratie und Toleranz" (School's commitment to democracy and tolerance) in 2017.