Besides giving a background to the inspiration to this fundraising effort (see our story below), this page was created to recieve ad hoc donations and to show a running total of funds and donations. We have finished fundraising now and are delighted to have exceeded our target!

  

Christ Church Woodbury visit Seeway Tanzania - October 2009
With an average age of 55, seven of us from CCW went on an adventure to Africa, to a rural area near Arusha, the capital of Tanzania.  We were to spend time with Rebecca, a woman of a similar age who grew up in Okehampton, and her American fellow missionary Wendy, who have spent 5 years nurturing this little project to rescue some of Tanzania’s children from abandonment and harm.

The two Nurses in our group were tasked to present workshops for women, the men had banana trees to trim and the rest of us were really just willing hands.  All of us had paid our own way and had fund-raised a tidy sum between us to buy provisions for the children and pay for grain bought for us that we were to distribute during our stay.

It was quite a culture shock and certainly no holiday which was the impression some had of our proposed venture!  We lived and walked with the villagers every day, they delighting in our presence whilst we tussled with our conscience over our worldliness. We were put to work, spending a lot of time with the children at each of the three rented homes throwing ourselves into our tasks and delighting in engaging with the children in childhood games. They were so delightful and we had such fun with them it was heart tugging to say goodbye at the end of our stay.

We were so impressed and inspired by Rebecca and Wendy’s work with Seeway Tanzania and their outreach into the surrounding community we persuaded the church back home to help us raise money to help with the building and equipping of SWTz’s project now that they have acquired some land of their own.

From September 2010 the church embarked on a year of fundraising, setting the target at £20,000 which was a big deal for a small church in a small Devon village. Among the events we held we sent a 72yr old Grandad on a 160 mile walk  and a Grandma skydiving from15,000ft! see my page http://www.justgiving.com/Trish-Sussex  

Thank you to all those who fundraised, gave their time and helped. I have since been back to Tanzania to see the new nursery we paid to have built  www.swtz.org Whoopee!