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Just to keep you all updated just a couple of days before Christmas a donation was received in reply to our Christmas appeal

An extra Merry Christmas was had by local people because of a small donation from an Irish well wisher. Local people were able to have a Christmas party and a young child who was sick received medicine.

More fund raising news from Ireland will be on the site soon!

Best wishes to all

Gillian

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Hi friends i invites all you join my village kisozi to work as team.
Thanks
regards
Eddy mpoya kiirya.

Farmer Field School is a method to increase the knowledge on agricultural production in the farming community. Farmers come together in a group of ca 25 members and follow the development of the crop over a cropping season. They watch, discuss, experiment and learn together. Sometimes experts from outside are invited to deepen the theoretical knowledge, and sometimes it is found that the farmers themselves are expert on certain topic.
In September 2007, 6 groups of ca 25 farmers each started the first cashew farmer field schools in Tanzania. 150 cashew farmers have now graduated from these farmer field schools.

Rebecca Dulo is a depressed community sandwiched by two gated middle class subdivisions. Most of the men (heads of family) work for construction projects earning less than the minimum wage and taking home (after the cost of fares and food is deducted) only about $2-3 per day. When construction projects are over, they are unemployed for weeks. The local culture pulls them towards gambling and alcoholism, compounding the problem.

Most of the women are simply unemployed yet trying to feed many mouths. How can they go to work and still take care of their young children? Some try home-based jobs that pay only $1 per day. Again, the local culture pulls them towards gambling and alcoholism, compounding the problem.

A feeding program began several years ago fed more than 200 children every Saturday. But then it wasn't enough. The problem of the many families in Rebecca Dulo is grinding poverty -- men often without jobs, women without jobs and many mouths to feed, children who could not afford to go to school.

The local community would like to establish a multi-purpose cooperative that would buy and sell rice at a price much less than what is available in the local markets. This would be a big help for the families in the village since they have a hard time finding the cheapest rice sold by the government. Later, as the cooperative becomes better established, they hope to produce handicrafts that they could sell locally and internationally.

Since most of the people in the community can barely afford to pay the cooperative membership fee plus the shares required, we need to raise funds to jump start the cooperative and get it moving. Hence, this is a one-time fundraiser.

We hope that you will support our project with your votes so that we can begin fundraising! You can vote for our proposal here:

http://www.givemeaning.com/proposal/hopecooperative

Voting is easy and it only takes a few minutes to register. Thank you in advance for your support!

Latest results from our village:
1. Story about our local representative "Running for a Cause" is promoted on Nabuur.com main page
http://www.nabuur.com/en/group/storytelling/news/2008/12/running-a-cause
2. Number of Kidedu.org articles is 100 and visits in December were 984, what is more than 30 visits daily:
http://kidedu.org
3. New products were added to online shop, so you can select from more than 100 items:
http://www.cafepress.com/kidedu
4. Earnings from AdSense clicks are almost 25 USD.
Please bad result from the last year is decreased number of village neighbours, but all are welcomed to join again.
Estimated list of tasks for next year:
1. Cooperation on recent tasks and projects.
2. Inviting new neighbours (volunteers) and partners (companies and organizations) to join our project.
3. Creation of 100 new Kidedu.org articles during year 2009 and increasing quality of recent, so that number of daily visits will be over 50.
Please as webmaster I will focus on Kidedu.org design and promotion, because it can be sustainable source of funding for our project via AdSense.
Please post comments with new ideas and improvements.
Thank you, all best and good bye.
Frantisek Korbel, frantisek.korbel@volunteer.nabuur.org

While looking for ways to use the cashew shells as energy sources, we run into a newly established non-for-profit company ARTI-Tanzania. ARTI-Tanzania is promoting the technologies designed by ARTI-India in Tanzania. We took a special interest in the rather simple charring kiln developed by ARTI and the even simpler charcoal press.
In March 2008 two technicians from Dar es Salaam came to Masasi to explain local artisans how to make the charring kiln out of 11 empty oil drums and how to make the charcoal press from by modifying a meat grinder. 30 farmers from the local communities were trained in the use of the charring kiln.
Now we have access to this new technology, we can turn agricultural waste into charcoal, we can increase or income and reduce the degradation of our environment by saving the natural forests

Part of the fund has been used for capacity building of the groups, including registration of a company and registration with the fairtrade labelling organization (FLO)
A second part of the fund has been used for converting to organic production and organic certification. This includes the payment to the tanzanian inspection body Tancert.
A third part of the fund is used for introduction of good agricultural practices. Farmer Field Schools, study tours of lead farmers, visits by experts from the Naliendele Agricultural Research Institute all contribute to the goal of improving the cashew yields.

Thanks
Project Director of Hope Alive Uganda