If this little girl gets the chance to go to school, herself and her own children will have a rosier future that what is facing her at this moment and the world will be a better place. Send a gift today. Thank you.

This Saturday I went to a T4A training meeting together with other small charities working in Africa to learn, share expertise and network together.

I am a great believer in networking and in the benefits which can derive from charities working together wherever possible, particularly when working internationally.  I am sure we all know the anecdotal stories of villages where several charities discover they are duplicating efforts. I know from my own experience of African towns that have twinned with multiple UK donors. Recently in western Uganda I was astonished to find almost 20 local NGOs operating in a small geographical area. They had become the main local industry and employer!

If we are going to do Development effectively we need to work smarter. I believe that T4A is part of working smarter and the benefits of meeting together for events like this are manifold.

I came away from the day with some key tips for researching and drafting more effective trust fund applications.  I also learned about how to make money from websites but one of the most valuable benefits was simply being able to talk and share experiences with others.

The 750 students at this co-educational school for 11 – 18 year olds vote each year for the charity they would like to support. They chose Mustard Seed Project because they knew that every penny that they raised would count and make a difference. Each of the twelve houses thinks of their own fundraising idea in addition to whole school events.

Traditional style of cooking is not energy efficient and the soot is hazardous

Approximately 3 billion people (1/2 the planet) are reliant on cooking their food over open fires. The problems associated with this have been well documented in the past and include pollution from soot which leads to respiratory problems; the release of carbon into the atmosphere adding to the problem of global warming; as well as deforestation and the environmental impact that represents.

An article in The Daily Telegraph (7.5.11) tells us that many development agencies have for a long time being urging open fire users to use cleaner stoves and have offered designs to assist them. A brilliant design that has recently been winning awards is the Biolite stove which amazingly also generates electricity. It sells, The Daily Telegraph tells us, for $20. I am not sure if that is $20 in the US or $20 in the small town markets in rural Africa. It does not say.

According to The World Bank in 2005 there were 1.4 Billion people living on less than $1.25 a day, this is the recognised International Poverty Line. Families living here do not have a disposable income that allows them to save $20 to buy a stove. So who is going to buy and distribute these amazing stoves? I commend the brilliance of the invention but am worried that the solution is the result of a science project and as such fails to recognise some of the most important problems surrounding the people at whom it is aimed. This is the problem with many “solutions” in that they are far too linear.

The enclosed fire focuses the heat into the pot and the fire heats the pipe that also heat the water.

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust understands that poverty is a complex web of inter related problems and understand that the solutions need to be just as inter related and address as many of the problem rather than just one.

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust is supporting local women’s groups with knowledge and skills training to assist them with their fuel efficient stove projects. Their stoves are made locally and so can be distributed locally, the profits from the business is returned to them which boosts their income and helps them achieve their own goals. The stoves are selling for only $5 and are 60-75% efficient, which might not be as efficient as Biolite, but are sufficient enough to slow down deforestation and allow the community to plant trees at a rate closer to that of their demand. Another project we help them with. We have also agreed subsidise the stoves by $1.50 to enable the price to be $3.50 so that more people can benefit from stoves. A household buying wood for the stove will have made savings greater than the purchase price within the first year. We figure that a £1 donation is not too much to ask to have such a fantastic impact.

We are also subsidizing the women to go to Dodoma and learn about different stove making styles to add to their skills and motivate them to continue with this fantastic project. The training is being provided by Sunseed Tanzania and represents how small NGO’s are working together, through an organisation called Together4Africa to pool knowledge to make a greater impact in the communities we are working in.

The bottom line to the fuel efficient stove situation is that the problems of open fire cooking cannot be solved without addressing the other needs of the community. They are all part and parcel of the same problem.

It was the first classroom to be built at the school without lintel because it was only intended to support the weight of a thatched roof. When a corrugated sheet roof replaced the thatch, the weight caused the walls to crack. The small overhang of the roof caused the rainwater runoff to fall too close to the building’s foundations which then started to erode. But with nowhere else to go, the teachers and students had no choice but to ignore the pending doom.

In the summer of 2010 the Livingstone Tanzania Trust took action and knocked it down before it fell down and after reinforcing the foundations we rebuilt the classroom with two lintels for added support under a new corrugated iron roof. At last the young people had a safe classroom. Might not be lovely but it was safe.

Then in February/March 2011 we transformed this dark little classroom into the finest kindergarten classroom in the whole Manyara region with new tables and benches, an interactive notice board, text books, building blocks and other early learning toys.

Early learning is the foundation stone of our education getting it right for the young people of Tanzania is so important. Our new project is to build a library and start the reading competition that is working so well as our other school. If you want to help us with our work please donate HERE

Simon Page

Tanzania Trust. He is spending months training for what will be a massive challenge. To cycle from London to Paris in just 24 hours. Most challenges like this take 3 days but simon wants to make it harder and more worthy of a donation. Call him crazy, call him what you like but he is going the extra mile to help us buy books for primary schools in Babati, northern Tanzania and we need and would love your support. Please click HERE to go through to his fund raising page. THANK YOU

To learn more about what we are doing, visit our website

Do you want to be at the legendary Glastonbury Festival this June, enjoying the music, creativity and bucket-loads of festival spirit?

Do you want to support a small charity working to support girls in Tanzania?

Why not apply to join the Kiota Recycling Team?

For more information, see http://www.kiota.org/news/144 and get in touch!

the kanga project

If you remember the old one, you won’t believe your eyes- what a difference a bit of HTML can do! But looks are not everything and our make over has its roots in a search for usability, yours and ours. We could not update or modify the old one without a knowledgeable person amongst us. But this one is using one of the latest “user friendly” wonderful wordpress theme, adapted for us by a very “user friendly” too designer from the US.
We hope you enjoy browsing. If you only have time to scan through for now, look at all the main header pages, they have extracts from their sub-pages. There will be some interesting additions over the next few weeks, but we could not wait any longer to get it live. Enjoy and we expect a lot of feed back, good or bad. Oh and the odd donation too will be more than welcome. Thank you for visiting.

Julie Baldwin, a teacher in Nailsea Bristol, has spent the last 14 months getting fit for her challenge of a life time. She sets off in October 2010 to climb Kilimanjaro so that her sister school in Babati Tanzania can have a another classroom.

As a community secondary school the school are dependant on the community to provide the classrooms, but the community are mostly subsistence farmers who are struggling to look after themselves and their family.

By helping Julie, you are helping the young people at this Secondary school get the education they need to fight poverty.

Julie has been raising funds through the school and has raised over £5000 this way, so we are very close to achieving something fantastic.

Many thanks for any support you can offer however small. please click on the link below…

https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/event.aspx?e=140c607d-a728-4810-9b99-8d504d239196

Clive Shiret, one of our Trustees (53 years old) is running in the Berlin marathon  on the 26th September 2010. He is running to raise money for a primary school whose lack of books is frightening.

Eager to learn

How can a young person get an education without text books? Sharing one book between 8 or 9 students is not getting an education. By sponsoring Clive and reaching our target of £4000 we can buy enough books to reduce that ration to 1 book per 3 students. whilst not perfect, it is so much better than what they do today.

Every penny of your donation will go towards buying the books so that these kids can get the knowledge they need to fight poverty for themselves, their families and their country

If you can support us in this aim, please go to the website below, and…… thank you

https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/event.aspx?e=91a1efa0-8717-4186-8492-1d72e47b5b94