Marg Paton
A big thank you from the children of Tabora League for Children (TLC) in Tabora, Tanzania, for their yummy Christmas lunch, their gifts, and for their families’ food parcels of rice and beans.
Thank you too for their nets and water-filters. Numbers with malaria are always high in Tabora. All those who needed new nets because their old ones got too holey to mend, have got them. Their family water-filters have a clay liner and the faulty or broken ones have now been replaced.
The children went back to school on 17 January 2022, so new school skirts and shorts were sewn locally, and the shirts and socks were bought in the market.
Shoes have been given out, heads shaved, and all the supplies needed for attendance at school have been provided, including bikes for those attending a new secondary school far from either home or their TLC centre. Mattresses and brooms and gardening equipment were needed for secondary boarding schools.
For the first time solar lamps have been given to students aged ten and above so they can do homework after darkness falls suddenly at 18:45.
An amazing £6,221 was raised for this seasonal appeal from all our supporters, including the very generous help from Oxford Quakers. It was all spent on our 150 children and their families over November, December, and January. The children are all sorted out, ready for 2022. This includes Saada, mentioned in a 9:30 Afterword. She came daily to one of our Centres asking to join TLC and be helped to attend secondary school once she had been allocated a place. We agreed and she was kitted out. Her mother sells bananas on the street and simply could not afford what was needed. Father had deserted the family.
All the children are sponsored, and that helps to pay for the daily lunches served at each of the three TLC Centres. The Centres provide safe havens for these vulnerable children. Extra tuition from the two part-time teachers in each centre is enabling significant improvement in class positions. Class sizes range from 100 to 375.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 514 • February 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW