Build a school for 100 Maasai children in Tanzania

Dear Donors,

You were all generous enough in March to contribute to our appeal for funds to build a primary school in the Maasai sub-village of Kiruru, in Tanzania, for which we and the people of Kiruru are very grateful.

While the appeal was running online, we were actually out in Tanzania, and spent some time with our friends in Kiruru making further plans. The attached photos show our discussions, including practical brainstorming on how they wanted their village to grow. One picture shows the pre-primary school volunteer teacher Nemburis - one of the dynamos of advocating progress and development in the community - moving models of buildings to help discuss where the village would like new shops and facilities like a health centre to go. The attached video shows more of this.

And we were invited inside the current pre-primary building, where Nemburis and her fellow-volunteer prepare the children of the community for entry into primary school, currently 7km walk away. You can see their own incomplete primary school in the background of the main discussion picture - the village had been able to make a little bit more progress with this, but not much given the unseasonably heavy rains.

As I'm sure you all appreciate only too well, as our online appeal was going on, in March, the world changed. The COVID pandemic seized hold of every nation, and changed all our lives. We obviously haven't seen our friends in Tanzania since. But thanks to our partner organisation in Tanzania, local NGO OMASI, the Maasai communities that we work with have been helped to respond to the pandemic. Even though it is difficult for remote village communities like Kiruru, they have been isolating and distancing themselves as much as possible, and taking all possible precautions. The happy news is that whilst, tragically, the virus has reached the Maasai plains, all the communities in which we are working, including Kiruru, are still safe.

Clearly neither we nor they have been able to make any progress with the school since then, but please be assured that your funds are safe and as soon as the situation in Tanzania eases a little, we'll be using those funds to help them continue their top priority to provide a safe education for their children, in their own community. And we will of course keep you all updated.

In the meantime, we're very conscious of the potential devastation the coronavirus could wreak on the fragile communities we work with in Tanzania, such as Kiruru. If the virus were to reach them, there is little easy access to health care, and little up-to-date information for how to deal with it. That's why we're currently engaged in another campaign, to try to raise some funds to help the health centre in the local main village of Terrat (including to provide protective equipment for the medical staff, and hand-washing and hygiene facilities for the patients), and also to make sure we keep the local community radio station on-air. It's the only source of information on COVID to local isolated communities like Kiruru - especially since it is the only one broadcasting in the Maasai language.

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/transform-health-10000-tanzanians/

Since I hope you have, like us, taken Kiruru and Simanjiro into your hearts, we would love it if you could share this fundraising link with friends and family, to help us help the whole population of the region stay safe from the devastating effects of coronavirus.

We look forward to updating you again in a few months, when we very much hope to be able to share some good news. Thank you again for your generosity, and for thinking of all our friends in Tanzania.

Links:

• Video of community development discussions in Kiruru, March 2020
• Our latest Globalgiving project, to help healthcare in Simanjiro