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Hope through Education
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HABARI!
News from
Godparents for Tanzania
May-June, 2010
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Discovery Safari 2010
ready for takeoff! |
Mt. Kilimanjaro
 | A dozen Discovery Safari travelers depart soon for
Kilimanjaro and another exciting adventure in Tanzania.
This year group members
hail from Virginia, North
Carolina, Florida, Maryland and Minnesota.
With generous gifts from G4TZ supporters, we will be taking brand new netbook computers to eight of our
university students. We'll see some big grins and hear, "Wao! Really? I can keep this? I can't believe it! Asante sana sana!"
As usual, we will
be visiting our students, project sites, churches and making several student
home visits as well as three full safari days for game viewing at Tarangire
National Park and Ngorongoro Crater.
We will do our best to stay in touch with the folks back home through our Discovery Safari Journal by posting updates as often as possible. Journal entries will come automatically to anyone with a subscription to Habari! If you know of others who might like to read our Journal, please invite them to go to our G4TZ website and subscribe to Habari!
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Discovery Safari 2011 dates set |
We'll do our best to make sure sponsors meet their students.
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Our 2011 Discovery Safari to Tanzania will depart Washington-Dulles on July 6 and return on July 21. Currently, 11 of 16 seats are available. For more information, please see the Discovery Safari pages on our G4TZ website. Trip costs will be available this fall. This is not a physically demanding trip. We have had travelers from nine to 90 all of whom got along very well. We invite you to join us for a great adventure in Africa! |
Hope through Education
| Hope through Education
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The G4TZ Board of Directors has adopted a new tagline, "Hope through Education."
Education is the greatest hope that young people in Tanzania have for lifting themselves from poverty and for building their nation. It is the long-term solution to the problems of poverty, disease and ignorance.
Our Tanzania Program Coordinator, Pastor Yotham Baha, calls poverty, disease and ignorance the "three enemies." He says, "If we can eradicate ignorance by sending a child to school and giving him [an] education, then the same child can fight the [other] two enemies by using this tool of education. And not [only] for himself or herself, but for the rest of the community. Ignorance is the greatest enemy we should fight if we really want to save this country of Tanzania."
Watch an interview with Pastor Baha on our G4TZ YouTube channel. Click here.
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Student reports coming this fall
| IIt's great fun when a sponsor can meet his or her student face to face on a trip to TZ!
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Sponsors may expect a report on their student(s) following our 2010 Student Interviews which will be held between June 26 and July 11. Differing school schedules make it difficult to interview every student every year, but we endeavor to do our best to update sponsors on their students annually after personal contacts during our student interviews or through our Tanzania Program Director who has regular contact with all our students.
Annual interviews are conducted by members of the G4TZ staff. The purpose of the interviews is to ascertain how each student is progressing in school, review grade and examination results, check on the student's health and family situation, do career counseling and make sure each of our students is doing well personally.
It will be a month or two after our staff returns in late July before student reports are sent. Please be assured we will send student reports to every sponsor as soon as possible. If you have more immediate questions about your student, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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School costs on the rise in Tanzania
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Students at Hai Technical Training Centre
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Not surprisingly, school costs in Tanzania are increasing. Unfortunately, the income of most of our poor families working to send their kids to school remains at about $1 per day For this reason, the G4TZ Board of Directors has acted to increase the annual scholarship requested of sponsors from $480 to $540 (or $45/month) effective July 1, 2010 for the 2010-2011 academic year.
The scholarship provides students with school fees, uniform and shoes, books and stationery. At many schools, students are also required to pay additional fees for building maintenance, construction of new buildings, security and lab fees. Some schools also require students to bring maize and beans from home while other schools have students spend part of their day working to grow their food on school property.
In spite of any hardships, our students are very grateful to have the chance to go to school and their parents, who otherwise would have to keep their children at home for lack of school fees, say to those who sponsor their children, "Asante sana sana na Mungu akubariki sana!" (Thank you so very much and God bless you greatly!).
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From the President
It's not the place; it's the people |  When we depart next month, I will be making my 19th "once-in-a-lifetime" safari trip to Tanzania since 1995. And I can hardly wait to get on the plane!
People have often asked, "Don't you want to visit some other places? Why do you always go back to the same place?"
The answer is simple. It's not the place. It's the people. I laugh more in two weeks in Tanzania than I do all the rest of the year. Seems odd that one would laugh in the midst of poverty and disease. But, it's not the place; it's the people! It's people who have become dear to me and, thank God, enigmatically, I to them. These are deep and abiding friendships. These friends of mine would give their lives for me; I have no doubt. And there is no greater love than that. Yes, it's the people who in their need meet my own.
I am so eager to return to them, not only because we laugh so much and because they are so dear to me, but because they have taught me a great deal. Among the most important things they have taught me is both the danger and the true meaning of wealth. Wealth in the form of money, goods and power is unquestionably the most salacious and insidious force on the planet. We have no need of a devil so long as there are those among us whose sole purpose in life is to accumulate material wealth which is always at the expense of the poor in one way or another. It is, of course, not wealth itself that is insidious; it is the love of it that it is so destructive. We have ample evidence of that in our current economic predicament. The terrible damage selfish people have done and continue to do to so many extends across the globe.
By any measure, we are materially wealthy people compared to our friends in Tanzania, most of whom struggle daily to feed their families, educate their children and make a living on a dollar a day. Yet, instead of resenting us, they welcome us. When we show up, they kill the "fatted calf" (or goat) for us and act like we are long lost brothers and sisters now returned, prodigals who have lived well at their expense but who now recognize there is more to life than living well. They welcome us and share what little they have. True wealth is having friends like these.
It's not the place; it's the people. Who wouldn't be eager to return to them again and again?
Mungu awabariki sana! (Swahili for "God bless you all greatly!")
Dwayne J. Westermann, President
Godparents for Tanzania
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Godparents for Tanzania
is a 501(c)(3) public charity
incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia
Post: P.O. Box 20221, Roanoke, VA 24018
Voice: 540~353~6341
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