WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT

By Mcdonald Mollel Masse-Dsm


''In efforts to enhance entrepreneurial capacity amongst Njombe Region womens,Ms Skolastica is vigilantly working towards imparting entrepreneurial skills and advising them on ways to solve emerging hurdles and problems"

With passion of fighting against any oppression against girls and women in the society, Ms Scholastica Kevela is determined to ensure that one day she becomes a high government profile and policy maker in the country.

Having served as Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Women’s Wing Chairperson for Njombe District since 2008 Ms Scholastica is certain that she was born a leader and would continue to pursue this noble task for the development of women, men and children of this nation.

She stays awake with her dreams, and is determined to fight tooth and nail to ensure set goals are achieved. She believes that women empowerment was vital in attaining national development.

Born in 1967 in Njombe District, Iringa Region, Ms Scholastica completed her primary education at Madaba Primary school in 1983 before joining Songea Girls’ Secondary School the following year and completed in 1987.

After completing form four, she joined the Tanzania Post Corporation in 1989 as Post Officer at Njombe, a post she held for nine years. While serving as a Post Officer in 1994 she also attended a one year certificate course in storekeeping.

The road to success seemed to be rough but she held on, and in 2001 she joined London Metropolitan University where she pursued both an international diploma and advanced diploma in computer studies.

With Information Technologies (IT) subject proving to be quite difficult to most people especially women, this was contrary to Ms Scholastica. She devoted her time and resources pursuing it having in mind that few years down the road everything would have gone digital.

What a life on earth without IT knowledge? Probably this is another thing that forced her to be a great player in this field. Advanced diploma she was conferred did not satisfy her in education ladder. Going back to school to hunt for a bachelor’s degree was the only solution to make her more proficient in IT field.

In 2005, Ms Scholastica was enrolled at the same university for Bachelor of Science in Information System and a year later she was conferred a degree.

With vision of becoming multipurpose and skilful in many academic fields, she is at the meantime pursuing Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT).

Politics being part and parcel of her life and not a dirty game as comically referred to by others, Ms Scholastica since her childhood admired female politicians and was determined to one day climb to the podium and address people.

But what gave her a momentum later in adult life, was her husband’s aspiration in politics. Her husband Mr Yono Kevela had served as an MP for (Njombe-West) hence gave her a chance of seeing politics at home the interested to practice that grew much stronger.

She explains that from primary school through the education ladder, she was elected to hold various leadership positions in the classroom as monitor and later a prefect. At college she was school commander, and at various levels she served as a chairperson for various religious and non religious associations.

The year 2008 was the cornerstone for her politics journey although she describes her attainment as still like water drop in the ocean. She is optimistic that in a near future she will outshine in the field, by not only being a high profile leader but also an activist in women’s right movement.

“My passion for serving the society was accelerated when I was just an ordinary entrepreneur. It was at the course of my involvement in this entrepreneurship when I learned on the best way one can help women and girls fight for their rights, establish income generating activities and generally empower them economically,” she says.

She adds that “Like for ages Iringa Region has been the centre for fetching housemaids who work in Dar es Salaam and other big towns for meagre wages. Coming from the same area, this really disheartens me as among other things, it denied them their basic rights especially to education.”

She said she has started addressing this by educating girls and parents in the area on the importance of education to the children, and their rights in relation to minimum wage that one can be paid.

Ms Scholastica believes that girls like other human beings deserve all basic rights including education, as it is best put that educating a boy is to educate an individual but educating a girl is to educate the entire nation.

According to Ms Scholastica, attention to girls education was vital, not only for the development of the country, but to fulfil the right of every child to education hence the need of ensuring that a big number of girls attend school as would do boys.

Ms Scholastica seeming to be impressed with efforts being made by the government in girls education, particularly on increasing ward secondary schools, she says that such move were laudable and worth praising. The efforts, she add, has greatly helped to reduce the malady of street children especially girls who had in several time fell victims of rape and other gender-based violence.

As a CCM Women Wing Chairperson for Njombe district, Ms Scholastica has been in fore front in ensuring that her dreams of helping women and girls were making headway.
“I have managed to acquire about 30 hectares of land at Itandura Village in a newly-established Wanging’ombe District. The land would be used to build hostels for girls who have been subjected to gender based violence so that they can regain their humanity and pursue normal life,” she said.

In efforts to enhance entrepreneurial capacity amongst Njombe District women, Ms Scholastica is vigilantly working towards imparting entrepreneurial skills and advising them on ways to solve emerging hurdles and problems.

“Empowering women especially in economic aspect is essential, even President Kikwete has been encouraging women to initiate various income generating activities to improve their welfare and that of their families, she stressed.

She said she has decided to start influencing women in Njombe to adopt local chicken raring projects which she said was easy and paid well.

Ms Scholastica welcome other people and well wishers to help women in their localities with view to empowering them economically and subsequently develop the nation.

Currently she serves as Managing Director of Yono Auction Mart &Co. Ltd, Managing Director of Shola General Enterprises and Chaiperson of Women Entrepreneurship Development Forum (W.E.D.F).

Ms Scholastica, a mother of four children calls for women from all walk of life to build confidence and establishe income generating activities assuring them that such efforts always pay.

She is much thankful to her husband Mr Yono Kevela and his children for supporting her in every achievement she has recorded saying without their understanding, much of her goals would not have been met. And having in mind she still got a way to go in realising her leadership dreams, to her sky is the limit.