From Monday to Friday at 2:50pm students go for manual work until 3:50pm.The works they do at this time include; working at the Ushirika farm, gardening, livestock rearing, flouriculture, preparing vegetables, milling, keeping the environment, carpentry and fishing.
The works are done with an intention of giving students a manual work experience that will help them in their future life after school also to develop a self-reliance spirit among students, just like our country(Tanzania) needs to prepare people who do work for self-reliance so as to eradicate poverty and develop the whole nation.
Seminarians obtain food from the farm, which reduces the cost of food that was to be bought, as well they obtain fruits and vegetables of different kinds which are sweet and health improving. Manual work by students also saves the seminary's budget by reducing the cost of money that was to be paid to workers for instance repairing destroyed furnitures and milling.
Through manual work we make our environment better and We also help the surrounding community by producing goods which are important for daily life, for example we sell milk, vegetables and fruits to the surrounding community. We also have a few employed workers who help us in supervising manual work and doing some of the works which are supposed to be done during lessons and prayer time and those which take a long time to accomplish.
The challenges facing the work sector at FRASEMA are such as the increase of the number of students which make the school to have few working places compared to the number of students and hence the works become less cost reducing. For agricultural works, changing environmental conditions sometimes lead to difficulties in caring the crops and sometimes even more cost might be encountered. Some of the working tools are really old and less efficient relative to the recent activities and working methods since most of them were bought at the beginning years of the seminary so it becomes difficult to work with them, this includes machines such as dumpers, carpentry tools and saws.
Manual work at Maua seminary is very important both to the seminary and the country, it's amongst the seminary's culture and we really love it and we put every possible effort to keep it. We believe that we earn a lot from it, other people likewise. It's the culture that not only helps student during their time here but also during their future life, meaning it's the culture that builds the future. Prayer, Work and Academic are three mutual pillars of Franciscan Maua seminary.
