WORDS Catherine Marshall

The School of St Jude in Tanzania is helping provide children with a better future. 

Gemma Sisia didn't have much experience to draw on when she set about building a school in the East African country of Tanzania: up until then, her biggest building project was the construction of a guinea pig's cage.

If anything, this naiveté was a bonus, says the girl from country NSW who went on to become the Founder and Director of The School of St Jude in Tanzania's bustling northern city of Arusha.

'I actually had no idea what I was getting myself into', says Gemma. 'I didn't think much about it. I just wanted to build a school for kids.'

The school, which relies entirely on sponsorship, opened its doors in 2002 with just three students; eight years later, it educates 1,200 children and grows year by year when the original class graduates to the next stage. Gemma is 'hanging out' for 2014 when the comprehensive primary and high school, complete with boarding facilities, will finally be completed.

But she's quick to dampen any romantic notion of the journey she's taken from her parent's sheep farm in Guyra to the safari capital of Tanzania.

'It's been very, very hard, and it’s a different type of hard each year', she says, referring to the unending quest for funding, the constant expansion of the school, the heartbreaking student selection process in which she is forced to turn away thousands of desperate children each week.

It's these crowds of children, who throng the school gates every Friday for six months of the year in the hope of being admitted, that give Gemma the strength to continue.

'I hate the crowds', she emphasises. 'There's such a need there, and I will keep doing this until the crowds get smaller. '

Knowing that the school could never accommodate all the children in Arusha desperate for a good education, Gemma adopted a set of tough entrance criteria from the outset: the school only accepts Grade 1 students who are in the top 10% of their class and come from very poor homes (cement floors and electricity would disqualify them). In an effort to spread the privilege, only one child per family is accepted at the school.

'We just had to have criteria so difficult that only 150 children can pass them [each year]', she laments. While she would like her two young sons and baby daughter to attend St Jude's, says Gemma, 'we don't pass the criteria. And as the leader I can't break my own rules.'

 This strong, pragmatic approach is not without its own deeply spiritual basis. Growing up as the only daughter in a family of eight children, Gemma was influenced early on by the retired priests who would regularly visit the family farm. 'They were like my grandfathers', she says.

After school, Gemma missed out on medical school by the narrowest of margins—something she now views as a blessing in disguise. Redirecting herself into the fields of science and teaching, Gemma briefly considered becoming a nun. Despite a wonderful time spent teaching and living with a group of sisters in a convent in Uganda, she decided that a religious vocation wasn't for her.

Not long after, while on safari in East Africa, she met her future husband, Tanzanian Richard Sisia. The die was cast: Richard's father gave Gemma a piece of land on which to build the school, and St Jude's has grown mushroom-like since then.

It's this school, and the children it serves, that have turned out to be Gemma's true vocation. While she misses her family dearly, and still regards herself as an outsider in Tanzania, it's this East African nation that she now calls home.

‘I'm not trying to save the world, I'm not trying to change the system, or end corruption’, she says. ‘I'm just trying to help 1,200 kids get a good education to make them more employable. If it helps them put more food on their plates or helps them get a better job and helps their families in the long run, well then I've done my job.’

To find out more about how you can support the school of St Jude, visit their website at http://www.schoolofstjude.co.tz/

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