15th October 2008
To all our friends who have expressed willingness to support the development charity ‘SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS’:
This is the seventh newsletter which has been issued to those of you who have offered support for SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS. The previous report was produced quite recently in August, but there is plenty to report after a very busy few months. If you have not been in touch recently, you might find it useful to read the accompanying Annual Report, which summarises progress upto 31st March. A comparison of these two documents will show you how much progress there has been during the last four months.
You can use the Annual Report and this newsletter to inform friends, colleagues and other interested parties about what sort of work is done by SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS. Spreading the word about SGG is essential if we are to reach our financial target of £25,000 for our third financial year, which ends on 31st March 2009. Also please use this newsletter to help you decide what practical action you can take to promote Millennium Development Goal No 1, the eradication of global poverty and hunger.
Here is some good news for SGG supporters. In March 2007 Bill & Jackie Neale pledged to raise the £16,000 necessary to construct a health centre on this site, which was a field at the time. The photo shows how much progress was made in one year, as this picture was taken in February 2008. Notice the brickwork in front of the blue rails. These are the bottom bricks for the Men’s and Women’s Wards. You can see that this phase of the construction is only just started.
This photo was taken in August 2008. It was taken from the Outpatients Department, which is being managed by two Usambara Sisters, across the small courtyard to the wards. Those wards were only a few bricks high in the previous photograph. The Outpatients Department has been open since June and for emergency cases it is now possible for a patient to stay overnight. However, more construction is needed before the Centre is fully operational.
The construction of Soni Health Centre is only one aspect of progress recently. The main basis of this rapid progress is that SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS has had the benefit of three volunteers who have spent their holiday time since July undertaking SGG project work in Africa.
Henryk Parker and Martha Cronin are both students at Lampeter University, and they spent five weeks this summer working in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. Much of their time was used to further progress with Project 6, the Soni tree-planting project, and also to monitor progress on the construction of the health centre there. However, the most exciting aspect of Henryk & Martha’s visit is that they were able to initiate some new projects where SGG has previously not had sufficient time or capital to invest. They have started a project for both water storage and tree-planting at Kongai Primary School, and they have initiated another project where indigenous tree cover will be restored on bare hillsides near the village of Ubiri in the Eastern Usambaras. SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS believes that the Ubiri project has great potential, and that it could easily become one of our most popular projects. The reason for this optimism is that Ubiri is located very close to the Amani Nature Reserve, which is one of the biodiversity hotspots of Africa. If Henryk & Martha and SGG manage to make even a small contribution to forest restoration in this locality, it will be by far our most important environmental conservation project to date.
Here Henryk is clearing the weeds away from the small trees planted over the last two years.
The new projects started by Martha and Henryk mean that SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS now has several projects in North-East Tanzania. Those five projects which were started in 2007 now all have reports posted on our website, which is www.sustainableglobalgardens.org. We shall post details of Kongai Primary School and the Ubiri projects as soon as possible.
There is now sufficient work for SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS in this region of Africa to last for several years. Our plan is that Paul will visit Tanzania at least once a year – and probably in January/February. This would be an excellent opportunity for anybody wishing to take a self-funded working holiday when they could dip their toe into practical development work.
Progress has not been limited to Tanzania. In September another volunteer, John Harrison, accompanied Paul on his annual monitoring & planning visit to OWDF in West Kenya. John is a farmer in Northumberland, and he proved to be extremely useful – especially when visiting those groups who had been donated a moneymaker footpump. What has been established is that a group of farmers can increase food production & profits equivalent to the initial price of the ‘moneymaker’ within one year. Project 1, the provision of moneymaker pumps, has proved to be a very popular project with local farmers. Thus, although SGG has completed our original promise of 20 such pumps [so far we have donated 26!], there is a strong request for us to continue with this work.
Mothers waiting with their children and hoping to benefit from Project 2, support for orphans and other vulnerable children. John Harrison, seen here in the background, is helping with the monitoring work done during this village meeting.
Last year SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL GARDENS gave over £4000 to support 959 orphans & their carers. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near enough. The above figures allow each child support of about Ksh 10/- (8p!!) per week, which is insufficient to purchase even one good meal a week. Thus, I made the hard decision that SGG should concentrate on supporting a maximum of 500 such orphans. The simple message is that SGG needs to raise much more money if we are to achieve our basic principle of ‘£1/month per orphan’ with a 5 year running time. It is clear that we shall need to raise well over £10,000 per year if we are to meet initial aims. In our next newsletter, which will arrive about Christmas, I hope to present some proposals about how we could achieve this target in 2009.
Paul Keeley