Help Bring Computers to Mgeta Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania

As a part of my LiA, I've partnered with the Khalifa Foundation in Tanzania to raise funds to purchase 20 computers for the Mgeta Secondary School, which lacks computers but has students who want to learn computer science. Any support from the Laidlaw community is greatly appreciated!

Jun 02, 2024

Trisha Bhujle

Laidlaw Scholar, Laidlaw Foundation

Help Bring Computers to Mgeta Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania

Liked by Nikol Chen

Hi everyone! I'm Trisha, and I'm traveling to Tanzania this summer as part of my LiA project to further my research on human-wildlife conflicts. As a part of my LiA, I wanted to share a fundraiser I've started in collaboration with a local Tanzanian NGO to support an educational initiative in rural Tanzania:

While in Tanzania, I will be staying with Salum Kulunge, who is a member of my research team. Salum works with me on the Morally Contested Conservation project and is an Officer with the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority, where he visits and supports communities that have experienced attacks by wild animals. Salum's son Khalifa passed away in 2022 while a student, and Salum started a nonprofit called the Khalifa Foundation in his name, to promote education, economic growth, and sustainable development in rural areas of Tanzania.

Currently, the Khalifa Foundation is aiming to purchase 20 computers for the Mgeta Secondary School, which lacks computers but has students who want to learn computer science. In collaboration with the Khalifa Foundation, I started a Go Fund Me to try to raise money for this project, and I wanted to share it with the Laidlaw community! I will be visiting the school in a few weeks to help wrap up the project prior to beginning my fieldwork. Any donations and/or shares would be deeply appreciated.

A link to the fundraiser, as well as more details, can be found here. Thank you all very much ❤️

Trisha Bhujle (She/Her)

Laidlaw Scholar, Laidlaw Foundation

Hello! I’m Trisha, a third-year student at Cornell University from Texas, USA. I’m majoring in Environment and Sustainability with a concentration in Food Systems, and minoring in International Relations and Climate Change. My interests in combining my enduring passions for writing and wildlife conservation have driven me to explore multiple perspectives on highly-controversial issues such as trophy hunting, retaliatory animal killings, and illegal wildlife crime. Thus, during my first summer as a Laidlaw Scholar and as a member of the Morally Contested Conservation team, I wrote a literature review on the interconnectedness of climate change and human-wildlife conflicts in East and southern Africa. In June and July 2024, I furthered this research by traveling to the University of Oxford and to the Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania.

As an aspiring environmental policymaker and journalist, I am passionate about making technical scientific information more accessible to the general public. At Cornell, I am an Institute of Politics and Global Affairs Scholar, through which I interact with policymakers monthly to discuss pervasive issues in international politics. I also speak Marathi, Spanish, and Swahili at varying levels of fluency and plan to continue to grow my language skills to communicate environmental issues across continents and cultures.

For fun, I love to turn even the most mundane materials into recycled art, spend hours on end working through jigsaw puzzles, and go for runs while listening to podcasts. And as a diehard foodie who loves to travel, I’m always looking for recommendations of places to visit or new recipes to try!

The Laidlaw Scholars Program has been an invaluable component of my undergraduate experience. The friendships I’ve made, as well as the research and language skills I’ve begun to develop, have encouraged me to continue to ask and seek answers to complicated questions about global affairs and environmental science. If anyone has questions or feedback about the Laidlaw Program, is interested in collaborating, or just wants to say hello, please feel free to email me at trb238@cornell.edu. I hope we can meet in person someday!

Watch this video for a brief introduction to myself.