Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.
I am not doing a sky dive, climbing a mountain or shaving my head, but I am working hard to help the Anglican young people of Tanzania!
I am a Mission Partner with CMS working for the Anglican Church of Tanzania in the youth office. TAYO is the "Tanzania Anglican Youth Organisation", and works with Anglican church youth groups in towns and villages all over Tanzania. We have a small loans and savings project which enables youth groups to develop their own income generating activities so that they can be financially independent and not reliant on hand-outs. We encourage the groups to start projects which also help individual members, their families, their local communities and local churches.
We have recently finished a pilot project in 2 dioceses in Tanzania with amazing results. Groups took very small loans of between just £100 and £300 and were trained in project and financial management, and developed some great projects. The projects are very varied including keeping pigs or chickens, vegetable gardening, running small buisnesses such as cafes, buying and selling crops, carpentry and many others. The groups are also taught to make savings as a group so that after returning their loans they have a lump sum of money of their own to continue developing their project.
One of the highlights of the pilot project was "Tumaini" (Hope) Youth Choir who took a loan of only around £150 to set up a vegetable gardening project. They used their loan to buy some good quality seeds and then decided to split the seeds into 3 lots. One lot was to plant for the group and they were able to set up a big vegetable garden for the choir and have been able to use the proceeds to buy hundreds of pounds worth of musical instruments as well as donating money to the church. The second lot was divided between choir members who were able to set up their own gardens around the group garden. Many individuals showed us what they had been able to achieve with their profits – for example one woman was able to pay for both her children to go to secondary school and one man had bought himself a motorbike. The third lot was loaned to community members outside of the group who set up their own projects with similar results. Their loan of seeds was returned in produce which the choir was then able to sell to raise more money. They also made savings throughout the project and will use this money to develop their project further
We want to develop our project and spread it into new dioceses so that many more youth groups, churches and local communities can benefit, but we do not have the funds to do it. Each time we receive a little more money we start on the next stage of the project and we have already been able to begin training in one diocese, the Diocese of Kiteto, but do not have the funds to give loans to the groups.
If you give just £100 this will provide a loan for a youth group which will benefit lots of people and the local church and community as shown above.
If we raise just £2,500 we will be able to train leaders of youth groups and pastors from their local churches from 10 different village communities, so that they are equipped to go ahead with their projects,
and £3,500 will pay the project officer's salary for a whole year so she is able to run the project effectively.
Any contribution you can make will be gratefully received and will make a huge difference in the lives of the young people of Tanzania
CMS are supporting us in this project so your contributions will be channelled through them, but all contributions made on this page will go towards this project.
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
So please dig deep and donate now.
