Thank You

Dear Friends and Family,

I wanted to follow up with all of you with regards to the incredible impact your donations have had on the women I was working with in Tanzania. With your help we have started small businesses for 10 women and are on our way to giving all of them the opportunity to live a better life.


During my time with these women I was able to provide three small business training sessions that focused on purchasing, bookkeeping, stocktaking, and marketing. I was also able to follow up with them on a weekly basis for four weeks in order to help them get their businesses set up and running. Since my departure a month ago, we've had two very capable people who have filled in for me to maintain continuity.


The goal of our program is to have each woman’s business show a continuous increase in value over a six month period. For those who are able to successfully grow their business over this time frame, we then have a graduation ceremony to show others that it can be done and to share best practices. I must admit these graduation ceremonies were some of the most fulfilling moments of my volunteer work.


This is one of the women that your generous donation directly affected;

This is Lillian Judika. She’s 37 years old and a widow after losing her husband to AIDS. She lives in a small one bedroom mud brick room in the Pasua ward in Moshi, Tanzania. She has three children including Musaali who you can see in the picture. He is five years old and also suffers from HIV. When I visited Lillian to interview her for this program, Musaali was suffering from TB and to be quite honest, none of us were sure he was going to survive. When I went to let her know that she had been chosen for the program, the TB drugs he was taking had started to take affect and he looked much better which is when I took this picture. Several visits later I was distressed to find out he was suffering from a bout of Herpes’ which had spread from thigh to chest. Herpes’ can be extremely painful as it affects the nerves in the body. For this boy to suffer as much as he has before the age of six made me very sad.
We chose Lillian for our program not only because of her plight but because she showed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the business she wanted to start and seemed very motivated to get started. Lillian decided that with the $100 dollar grant we were to give her that she wanted to open a kiosk (small store) outside her home which would sell basic foodstuffs like maize, beans, and rice. Here’s a picture of us buying her initial supplies;

With her grant we were able to buy 100kg of Maize and 50kg of beans. Within a week of doing business she had sold the entire bag of maize and ½ her inventory of beans. We pointed out to her that she was not making a huge profit on her maize by buying it for 75 cents a kilo and only selling it for 80 cents a kilo. However, she was making a 50 cent profit on each kilo of beans she sold which was fantastic. Maize is used to make Ugali which is similar to mashed potatoes and is a staple at almost every meal. Making a big profit from this item is difficult as it is sold on most street corners. However, what it does do is bring in customers who then buy a small portion of beans which costs a little more and is considered a slightly more luxury item. Her profit after one week had already reached $17 which was considerably higher than the $10 she was making prior to our program and your donation.

I can’t tell you how much these women appreciate what you have done for them and how it will affect their lives. TB and HIV drugs are free for all these women but one thing most people don’t know is that ARV’s which are the Anti –Retro Viral drugs people with HIV take to prevent full blown AIDS make you very hungry when taken. Since most of these women are so poor buying food to combat the side effects of ARV’s is very difficult. Your donation will help these women and their families live longer and healthier lives.

Thank you so much for your support!
David

Here are a few more photo's of the women and small business owners your donations are so generously supporting: