Roadmonkey 2010

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust has teamed up with Roadmonkey, the adventure philanthropist organisation in New York run by the energetic Paul von Zielbauer, a former correspondent for the New York Times. He is bringing a team of adventure seeking philanthropists to climb Kilimanjaro and then come to Babati to get involved in community development.

The team coming out in June have been asked to build a chicken coop over a fish pond at the Waangwaray Primary School farm. 

This rather bizarre challenge is part of the holistic approach that the Livingstone Tanzania Trust is developing at the farm. 

The chickens have access to the area around the chicken pond but at night and for shelter from the hot midday sun they return to their coop. The chicken droppings fall into the fish pond and are eaten by the fish. The water that becomes rich with both chicken and fish manure is then to be used to irrigate a small rice field. This will increase the normal rice yield by up to 6 times. The rice husks are then fed back to both the chickens and the fish. The fish can be harvested every 4 months and the eggs from the chickens sold. 

This is one of many projects that are being run on the school farm which form part of the income generation for the school. If the school can generate its own, sustainable, source of income, then the burden of maintenance costs will be removed from the shoulders of the community and help them improve their lives to escape poverty. The Farm also acts as a demonstration farm with ideas that the community can copy to help improve their own farms and generate their own income.

The farm therefore will reduce a households expenditure whilst increasing its income. This is just one of the ways in which poverty can be defeated.

For this reason we are very excited to be welcoming Roadmonkey to our community and the hugely valuable contribution they will be making.  

existing kitchen

 There is a second team coming out in August 2010 and after their Kilimanjaro Climb they will be challenged with the task of building a new kitchen for the school. 

This kitchen will be an environmentally friendly kitchen that will reduce the amount of wood that the school burns, provide hot water for the students to wash their hands with and provide a more comfortable and healthier environment for the cook. This kitchen will act as a model for other schools to copy and so not only reduce their carbon footprint, but also reduce their expenditure on firewood which can then be spent on other school necessities. 

If you want to sign up for this trip, please go to http://roadmonkey.net/expeditions/tanzania-kilimanjaro/ 

DONATING 

If you want to donate to this fantastic project please click on the Donation button below (left) if you are a UK or European donor.

U.S. donors should click on the website below to be directed to Omprakash, a Livingstone Tanzania Trust partner.  Omprakash is a registered U.S. 501c3, allowing Americans to the trust to receive a tax deduction for any donations to the trust. 

https://omprakash.org/DonationForm?go=DonationForm&p=12

www.blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/04/roadmonkey-1.html