Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page.

 

In Tamale, northern Ghana, people use bicycles for more than having fun and keeping fit. Community nurses and health workers visit new mothers and deliver vaccines by bike. Farmers need bicycles to take their produce to local markets. Teachers ride to their students in rural schools. But the roads in villages around Tamale are rough and full of potholes, so it is a hard life for a bicycle. Getting help to keep these bikes on the road is not easy.

 

Tools for Self Reliance is doing something about this. One of its partners, NORSAAC (Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre), is training young people who have had to drop out of school to be bicycle mechanics and helping them set up their own businesses.

Here’s what Abass, one of the newly qualified mechanics, said:

“I dropped out of school because my parents could not pay my school fees. I helped my father on his farm but I needed to get a trade so that I could earn a living.

"With the skills I have acquired, I feed myself three times a day, buy clothing and save money. My parents are very proud of me because I sometimes solve their problems with the money that I get. Now, I have an apprentice who comes and helps after school.”

Tools for Self Reliance provided bicycle repair tool kits and funded the training. NORSAAC organised the training so that the young entrepreneurs gained the business and bike repair skills they needed.

But to succeed any business must have customers, so NORSAAC worked with the local community at every step of the project. The communities rallied behind their local bicycle repairers because they had a vested interest in seeing them succeed.

Together with NORSACC we plan to give 16 more young people an opportunity for a new future in 2011. We need to raise the money to pay for the training and to ship the tools.

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 us and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - we raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs.

 

So please dig deep and donate now.

 

Tools for Self Reliance

www.tfsr.org