Making a difference to lives in Tanzania
RHONDDA to ARUSHA ... COMMUNITY to COMMUNITY
Making a difference to lives in Tanzania
RHONDDA to ARUSHA ... COMMUNITY to COMMUNITY
Our Major Projects
Thank you to our current project funders:
The Peter Stebbings Memorial Charity
The Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust
Current Major Project:
Empowering women in Muriet
'There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women' (Kofi Annan)
The Moriah Women's Group in Muriet, a suburb of Arusha, is led by our community co-ordinator Mary Owino. These enterprising women all run micro-businesses; from their profits, they give back to the Group to help other women start businesses, to help young people with educational costs and skills training, and to meet urgent needs within the community.
We have been helping the women pictured above to upscale their businesses (pig and poultry rearing, community shop, small scale farming, sales of food crops) and so generate more profit to be re-invested within their community, while inspiring and encouraging other women to start their own small businesses.
Now that the project has been running for over three years, we are seeing the fruit of our investment in these women! All five initial businesses are now generating profits for reinvestment, which has enabled the group to support nine more women to start or upscale small businesses, and to register the group as an officially recognised microfinance organisation. They've also been able to build a simple house for a local family (with 10 children) who were made homeless, and provide educational support for a Maasai girl to attend secondary school, while the well that Mary dug for her farm is also providing water for the local Maasai community.
With the help of the charity Legs For Africa, we have also been able to give the husband of one of the women in the group an artificial leg (he lost a leg in a fire accident when he was only 5).
Thank you so much to our funders The Peter Stebbings Memorial Charity, The Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust, and the Welsh Government's Wales and Africa Grant Scheme, who made this project possible!
Mateves Community Hall - ACHIEVED!
In 2018, our partner Onesphorus and his congregation held their church meetings in the open air. Their dream was to build a bricks-and-mortar hall, to serve both as a community hall which could be used by many different groups, and as a church building where services could be held and those in need come to be helped. There is a particular need for employability and skills development training for more disadvantaged groups within the community, so this would be one of the first uses of such a building.
We're very happy to say that, thanks to generous grants from the Van Neste Foundation and the Seedfield Trust, in addition to sponsorship and donations from our supporters, the total required has been raised and building was completed in November 2019!
A Dala Dala (minibus) for the
CHISWEA Centre - ACHIEVED!!The CHISWEA (Children of the Street Welfare Association) Centre in Arusha aims to rescue children from the streets, give them an education, and reintegrate them into the community. Over 600 children have gone through its care since 1991 and it currently looks after 36 young people aged between 11 and 20.
The Centre wanted to purchase a passenger minibus (locally known as a Dala Dala) to help in carrying out daily activities such as transporting children and buying supplies; however it was also to be used to transport paying passengers, generating income and enabling the CHISWEA centre to improve the services they provide and increase the number of children they can help – while also providing employment for two of the young people who have come through the care of CHISWEA, who have been trained as drivers and passed their tests.
A suitable minibus was identified and purchased at the beginning of November 2018. As the drivers are still in their mandatory probationary period, an experienced driver is currently being employed - but the income from the Dala Dala being contracted to a local school for pupil transport more than covers his wages, so the Dala Dala is already bringing in income for CHISWEA!
Dala Dala bought & drivers trained, thanks to a generous grant from the Cardiff charity Heb Ffin!!
