Raise the Planet, a new humanitarian student group at the U, will travel to Africa this summer to teach science at a school in Tanzania called Gombe School of Environment and Society.
“It’s a good opportunity to solidify your knowledge and major,” said Emmett Barlow, founder of Raise the Planet and a senior in chemistry. “It gives you the opportunity to take what you’ve learned here at the U and give it back to people who don’t have the chance to learn these things.”
GOSESO is a school in the heart of the Kitobe Forest in West Tanzania. The school was founded by Yared Fubusa, a native to Tanzania, who received his master’s degree at the U and his Ph.D. at Utah State University. GOSESO was the first college-level university established in Central Africa, teaching students ranging from 16-20 years old.
“GOSESO is an environmentally focused school,” Barlow said. “There’s a lot of environmental sciences and ecology, but not a lot of the major sciences.”
The GOSESO school board said Raise the Planet will be the first to implement a college-level science program in Central Africa, according to Barlow.
The group consists of seniors, some of whom are currently TAs at the U, majoring in physical engineering, biology and chemistry.
“We can cover the board,” Barlow said. “But we want to give them a good, solid base. If kids there don’t pass at least one of their three end-of-the-year tests with at least a 50 percent, they are done. They don’t get to move on to high school or college, and they don’t have the opportunity to repeat.”
Raise the Planet is trying to gather information on how much science background the students at GOSESO have.
“We sent out placement exams to find out exactly where these kids are with science,” Barlow said. “We don’t know exactly what we will be teaching. We don’t know if we’ll be teaching calc-based physics or the basics, like gravity.”
Once the group receives more information on what the students need to be taught, Barlow said Raise the Planet will meet three to four times a week to compile a curriculum for the time they will be spending at GOSESO.
The trip to Tanzania will last from the beginning of July until mid-August. The U, St. Mark’s Hospital and a few companies with ties to Raise the Planet will fund the group’s travels. The students going on the trip will stay in dorms currently being built on the GOSESO campus. If the dorms are not ready by July, the students will stay in a Walton Foundation-funded house. They will teach at the school five days a week and will be constantly available to help students.
As of right now, five U students and one paramedic are heading to Tanzania.
“We would like to have as many people as we can, but it’s an issue of funding,” Barlow said. “Tanzania is 6,000 miles away. Getting there is not going to be particularly cheap.”
Barlow believes with the funding the group currently has, only one more individual could join Raise the Planet in their humanitarian trip.
Whitney O’Bannon, a senior in mass communication, would eagerly take the opportunity to travel for humanitarian reasons.
“I think what they’re doing is awesome,” O’Bannon said. “I really like to support those groups that are going out to third-world countries and trying to make a difference out there. There are a lot of companies rising up and doing this, and the fact we have a group at the U that is trying to contribute to that is awesome. If I could swing it and get the time off, I would love to go on a trip like that.”
Barlow hopes Raise the Planet will continue traveling to Tanzania every year. Currently consisting of only seniors, Raise the Planet is looking to recruit sophomores and juniors who are working on their majors.
“There are not a whole lot of requirements,” Barlow said. “We have a member of the group who’s a [computer science major] and takes care of the website and social aspect of Raise the Planet. We have accounting majors keeping track of funds. We will take whatever we can get and use it. Some of us only have a semester left — we need something to keep us going.”