This week is my very last week as a volunteer at Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need. It has yet to sink in that I have just another three days left until the end of term and the end of my time here in Moshi. I've had an incredible time teaching at KYGN and will be so sorry to leave such intelligent, kind and fun-loving young girls. I will also be very sad to say goodbye to two truly inspirational women; charity director AnnaMariah and teacher Rahabu. However, I feel that I can leave Tanzania knowing that the five of us volunteers, Lizzie, Naomi, Michelle, Michelle and I, have achieved a lot over the last few months and I will do my best to fill you in on the latest developments.

The six girls, aged thirteen to nineteen, in my class have come along leaps and bounds since we began the new English and Maths programme in September. These six girls, due to tragic family circumstances, have never had the chance to get an education and so KYGN really is their last hope of breaking this cycle of poverty.

The girls began in September with little to no English at all. Most of them struggled with simple introductions and their vocabulary was almost non-existent. Last week I set them an English exam and they successfully answered comprehension questions on an English passage and translated a letter from Swahili to English (past and present tense!). Today was the Maths test and I was delighted to see them master long multiplication, long division, fractions, percentages and even simple algebra - the top score was 100%!

Teaching the class has at times been a real challenge. Four years as a Maths tutor in England does in no way prepare you for explaining common denominators in Swahili (!) and I must thank my fellow volunteer Lizzie for all of her help and support as, without her, we certainly wouldn't have achieved what we have. Despite battling with language barriers and poor attendance due to difficult home lives, the girls' enthusiasm and unwavering cheerfulness has made them an absolute pleasure to teach. My only hope is that next year they continue to learn and progress so that one day they will achieve their true potential.

As a group of five volunteers, one of our main achievements over the last month has been the implementation of a new Welfare Programme for the forty girls attending KYGN. We began the programme by inviting each of the girls' parents/guardians into KYGN in order to obtain information about whether or not the child is orphaned, the family's income status, HIV status and if the child has any known medical conditions. We then created files on each of the girls before running health screens to check for any unknown medical issues.

One of the major problems we found was a severe prevalence of infections, such as UTIs, which is a clear consequence of the poverty in which they live. However, other more serious conditions such as malaria, chest infections and skin conditions were also diagnosed and, last week, the girls were taken to the clinic for medication. As the one volunteer with absolutely no medical experience I had the task of keeping control of twelve five and six year old children in a hospital waiting room - deep joy!

The Welfare Programme has also been incredibly important in unveiling some harrowing home situations in the village of Mabogini. In the last month we have reunited a six year old girl and her younger brother with their birth mother after we found they were being abused by their father and stepmother. We have also taken care of a young boy who had been abandoned by his mother due to his learning disability and we are in the process of finding him a place in a specialised care home. We have also written to and visited the Childrens' Rights Office to get help for a number of KYGN girls we found to be suffering from domestic violence and/or sexual abuse.

On a lighter note, this week is activities week at KYGN and the younger girls are having a fantastic time covering themselves in paint, glue, glitter and whatever else they can get their hands on. Today the older girls in my class made a giant wall display of the solar system and a life-size human body complete with all the major organs. However, the best is yet to come with Wednesday's culmination of our time here at KYGN, Sports Day!