An Adelaide school is forging links with a rural school in remote southern Tanzania, with a special focus on helping girls study science.
This report part of a special series on Tanzania by SBS correspondent Karen Ashford.
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It's an early start for the long walk to school in the Southern Tanzanian village of Msindo.
There's no electricity yet spartan classrooms deliver a curriculum largely on par with Australia.
Science is popular, but the school's entire array of equipment consists of a burner, some test tubes and a lone microscope.
"We have few equipments but we don't have a lab - that is a big challenge in our school," said Msindo school Principal Fabian Nchimbi.
The would-be lab is filled with sacks of grain parents provide as the school fee, and to feed students.
Next door, scarce fuel means prized computers can be run for just a few hours a week.
"Mostly [what] we need [is] equipment, second, teachers, and electricity," says Mr Nchimbi.
ADELAIDE SCHOOL STUDENTS PITCH-IN
It's a call Thebarton Senior College in Adelaide has heard - many of its students are refugees who know the challenges back home.
Fundraising and surplus goods from closed schools means they're able to send enough for a basic laboratory.
"We take science laboratories for granted here in Australia, but that equipment is very expensive for them to secure for a school in Africa," said the Principal at Thebarton Senior College, Kim Hebenstreit.
Tanzania is especially determined to boost education for girls.
"We want to make sure that girls get a certain advantage, because they have been disadvantaged all along, and this is historical, it's also cultural," said the Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Mathias Chikawe.
"It was always thought that boys were better than a girl, and the girl can always get married."
Girls are now seen as intellectually equal to boys, but he says they remain physically vulnerable.
Be it chores that prevent them studying, or predation en-route to school, drop out rates are high; so boarding schools are seen as a potential haven.
"Pregnancies, early pregnancies for school kids is a major problem. Almost 50 per cent of the kids that start school do not finish, the girls, do not finish because of that. So we think by promoting boarding schools, particularly science boarding schools, we'll have given something to the girls," said Mathias Chikawe.
GIRLS MUST REACH THEIR POTENTIAL: TANZANIA'S AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA
Besides supporting a dozen children who've lost parents to AIDS, Tanzania's Ambassador to Australia is determined to ensure girls have every chance to fulfil their potential.
She pushed for Msindo to get its secondary school and funded a girls' dormitory. Villagers built it by hand, intended for 48, already housing 60 and facing demand for over 100.
Ambassador Salome Sijaona is a former Msindo student.
"If they remain sleeping at home it is very difficult for them to study, because of being required to support their parents, and for girls more, that they have to do almost everything to assist their mothers. That is why their parents agreed we should make this school."
In a country where education is so valued books are sold on the streets, hopes are growing that a little Australian support can lead to big dividends
"Computers, even technical laboratory equipment for some years you consider it obsolete, you just go recycle it or just out it away, but that thing which you consider obsolete, for us would be very useful," said Salome Sijaona.
Kim Hebenstreit at Thebarton Senior College in Adelaide says the project is about sharing knowledge.
"And I know that it's not just a charitable initiative on our part providing them with some equipment, it's about our students and our staff being abled to learn from a really different culture."
The children of Msindo are already grateful.
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