We're all experiencing a very different year to the one we'd planned. For Tools for Self Reliance 2020 should have seen a whole host of events and activities to celebrate our 40th anniversary year, including our annual Tea for Tools fundraising week, which was going to be bigger and better than ever before.

Have you perfected your banana bread during lock down?

We need you this October!

Vital summer fundraising events have been cancelled. Please support our Tea for Tools week to enable tools and skills to reach young people build livelihoods when they need it most.

Hold your own social distanced get together for Tea for Tools week between 5-11 October.

Tea parties will need to adapt this year maybe you could hold ;

a socially distanced family coffee morning

a cocktail night on zoom

Still enjoying zoom quiz nights? Make your next one a Tea for Tools fundraiser!

However you choose to take part, you will be empowering people like Ziblim and Seidu (seen above) to change their lives through skills training.

Last summer two young women, Ziblim, aged 18 and Seidu, 19, from Northern Ghana transformed the direction of their lives when they graduated as newly skilled tailors.

Both are mothers of toddlers Ziblim has never attended a day of school, while Seidu left at the age of eight. Her family, who rely on growing their own food to feed themselves, could not afford for her to finish her education. With little education, and no skills, both women had few options. Seidu and Ziblim cant go back. But the opportunity to train means that today they are looking forward to a future in which their own children can complete school.

Before, Ziblim felt powerless, always having to ask for everything in life. She was reliant on her family even for food. Today she loves the feeling of not having to ask anyone permission. By working for herself, she can earn what she needs for her and her child.

Without the skills training, and the sewing machines they were equipped with, Ziblim and Seidu, and their two children would be living without an income. And they would be solely reliant on other people to eat.

Thank you for hosting your Tea for Tools. The impact that your donations make is life changing for young people like Seidu and Zimblim.