Newsletter3

Things have moved at great speed and sometimes this is good and sometimes it is not.  For us this last 3 months has been very exciting as we match the things that being put in place come to life, and for the Wangwaray communitee it was also exciting times, but slightly bewildering at the same time. It is easy to forget that the speed of life of London is not the same and people do not grasp concepts as fast in rural Tanzania as they do in London. Having rushed ahead with projectsit was important to us that we return and discuss these ideas and plans with the community. it is a valuable lesson. Pole pole as they say here, slowly slowly, so we returned to Tanznaia to talk, listen, discuss, plan and enjoy each others company. It is vital in community participation programmes that the community are fully active and fully aware of all that is ging on and not excluded. Our self evaluation suggested that we had not been as communicative as perhaps we ought to have been.

Wow. You would not believe your eyes, even the locals are amazed at the progress. Land that has for years been idle or only roughly farmed is now home to banana trees, mangos trees, avocado tees, pass fuirt vines, pawpaw trees, beehives, watermelons, carrots, maize, cassava, onions, cabbage, vanilla, and that is only a thrid of the land. Marcel, our farming consultant and his community workers have done amazing things and things are looking great. Even the fish ponds are dug.

It was never thought that watermelon could grow here. Magic!

Interestingly that is what the community asked us. We are now drawing up a farm charter, a constitution, because a good idea is a complicated situation.

In order to be sustainable the farm has to generate an income that covers it's costs and makes a contribution to the set up costs. It needs to generate enough money to cover the school electricity bill that will arrive. It needs to provide the same amount of maize and beans that it was providing the school before the work, it needs to provide nutrituous supplements for the students, it needs to educate and stimulate..

If a subsistance farmer can increase his yield because of what he has learnt at our school, he will be able to increase his income and by so doing climb out of the poverty trap. He will be able to afford his school fees, new books.

The farm is now a business that provides resources for the school and on going sustainability.

Our impact analysis suggested that our actions on the farm were reducing the amount of water avaiable further down the pipe, so we have identified a new water source and are eager to connect to it, funding provided. These impact analysis are important, we need to understand the positive and the negative impacts of our work and we need to maximise the positive and minimise the negative.

What is very exciting is that two farmers up the mountain have already started to follow our example and a further farmer has asked about the fish ponds with a view to installing his own. We are also in discussions with Farm Africa who have shown aninterest in our operations

When your income is 10p per day and you are being asked to

• pay 40p per month forwards kindergarten for your child
• give up your time to build bricks
• give up your time to work on a farm
• provide food for your child at school

you do not have much to play with. Failure to pay community taxes leads to a spell in prision and to avoid that many runaway and this doesn't really help.

Yes by paying these fees on their behalf i going to help in the short term, but what is really needed is employment, and this is what the community have asked us to help them with. If they can be employed they can pay their own bills and not need other people to pay them for them.

It is vital therefore that when we employ people we use local people. To this end we have devised a number of fee earning activities that can be worked inot our other activities.

For the volunteers we will employ house mothers to cook for them, we will ask local ladies to demomnstate how to wear a kanga, how to dance, sing and paly drums.

We are paying the local people to work on the farm and become our security guards there

We have been asked to put in a milling machine so that they do not have to walk such a long way, this machine can empoy people and the profits returned to the community development fund.

This is just a start, together we are working out how we can develop more industries, allof which generates funds for the trust which can then invest in additinol schemes.

Peter is our artist, he works with local wood (Jacaranda), and he makes new things for us, from birds cloths pegs to animal pencil sharpeners to paper stands. His cottage indistry as made him $100 this year, $100 over and above what he would normally get. Tyis is why we encourage you to buy our "pro-poor products"