Hi everyone – I received this e-mail this morning from The Room To Read team in London. My husband and I have the privilege to support some very special charities we hold near and dear to our hearts. We made a donation to build a school in Tanzania, Africa through Room To Read, a charity specifically building schools and libraries for young children all over Africa. This is one of my favourite charities for many reasons, but it is near and dear to my heart as I love Africa and its people!
I wrote about its Founder, John Wood, last year, as one of the most inspirational Philanthropists I have ever had the privilege to watch in action. Something he is brilliant at is FUNDRAISING – convincing well to do people to part with their money. He raised £2,000,000 in less than 4 hours. A feat I could never get close to! Way to go John!
Anyhow, I was so excited when I read this and felt very proud to be a part of such a fantastic organisation!
Please read and support:
Dear Alex,
I am thrilled to share with you the first Room to Read Tanzania Fund Report, outlining the expansion efforts you have so generously supported. Thanks to your dedicated investment, we were able to successfully launch operations in Tanzania last year, laying the structural ground work that has supported our new literacy and girls’ education programming in 2012. Below is a summary of our most significant expansion milestones to date and program goals for 2012, with more in-depth details included in the attached report. The full report also contains an updated Tanzania Fund budget and information on our progress toward our fundraising goal.
Tanzania Expansion Milestones
- Staff Recruitment – We successfully hired our Tanzania country director, who has led our operational launch efforts. The new country director has begun recruiting local program staff and has secured leadership for our School Construction, School Libraries, Book Publishing and Girls’ Education teams.
- Office Setup – We registered Room to Read as a legal entity in Tanzania and established our country headquarters in Dar es Salaam and our first field office in Morogoro Town, Mvomero.
- Government and Community Partnership – We signed an MOU with the Mvomero district government, which is our first region of work in Tanzania. A draft MOU has also been submitted to the Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training for initial review and we have begun introducing Room to Read to local stakeholders.
- Program Planning – We completed site selection for program implementation and additional assessments of our target schools. From these assessments we developed an implementation calendar for our School Construction and School Libraries program in 2012 and launched the work of our Girls’ Education program in early 2012.
2012 Program Goals
- Build four-room classroom blocks in 15 target schools, providing three new classrooms and a separate library space for each school
- Publish five new local language titles and print 5,000 copies of each title (25,000 books total)
- Distribute 42,000 purchased or donated local or English language titles to Room to Read schools and other Tanzanian non-profits
- Provide life skills education and need-based academic and material support to 291 girls
Our program work is officially up and running in Tanzania and we are happy to say that we will break ground on our first construction projects in the Mvomero district by August. We will have our first set of local language titles printed by October and we plan to begin delivering books and furniture to our new libraries in November.
Your partnership has been instrumental to our launch efforts. I hope you enjoy reading about the exciting new work that you have made possible and I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress in 2012. On behalf of the entire Room to Read team and the thousands of Tanzanian children who will soon have access to new, life-changing educational opportunities—thank you!
Warm regards,
Chupa Phiri
Africa Development Specialist, Room To Read, London, UK
HELP SUPPORT THESE YOUNG CHILDREN AND GIVE THEM A CHANCE AT LIFE!
Oxeyedaisy
