Dear Friends,
This past year we received truly devastating news. Shortly after opening a new dining hall, the boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu Secondary School burned down in an accidental fire; more than 100 boys' had to move into the brand new dining hall. Since the dining hall is being used for shelter, the other students eat lunch outside or in the classrooms. We need your support to complete construction of the dormitory and to furnish it with beds, mattresses, and desks.
Over the past five years, FoTZC has partnered with Soit Sambu Secondary School as it has grown into an award-winning and academically rigorous school. Mr. Aziz Kaduma, the headmaster, recently told us that without the new boys' dormitory, the school will be forced to enroll fewer boys in the upcoming academic year. This means that many qualified boys will remain at home instead of continuing their education. We know that you won't let this happen.
Thanks to the support of a generous donor, all donations made to support the boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu Secondary School between now and June 30th 2016 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $50,000, doubling the impact that you will make in the lives of these students and their families.
Please make a gift that will help enable Soit Sambu to continue to be a beacon for students and the Loliondo community. You can donate online at www.fotzc.org/match2016 or mail a check to Focus on Tanzanian Communities, 14 Mount Auburn Street, Watertown, MA 02472. If you prefer to make a gift of securities, please contact us at (617) 923-0426.
Asante sana,
Constance Cork
President, Focus on Tanzanian Communities
Construction to Begin Soon
Construction on a 2-in-1 teachers' house at Sukenya Primary School and on the boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu Secondary School is due to begin soon. It was about this time last year that the former boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu burned down in a fire. Since then, the boys have been living in a newly completed dining hall, which has left the students to eat outside. It has been unseasonably rainy this year, so the students have been forced to take shelter in classrooms and under trees.
The 2-in-1 house at Sukenya is fully funded, but we still need to raise $50,000 for the dormitory. We plan to open the new, fully-furnished dormitory by the middle of this year, but we need your help to raise the remainder of the funds. Please help give these boys a place to live by making a gift today!
A Growing Need in Sukenya
The new year began with a record number of patients seeking medical services at our dispensary in Sukenya. In January alone, 454 adults and 178 children, along with 31 expecting mothers walked through the doors of the clinic. As we shared in October, in its first months of operation, the dispensary was already treating on average three times the number of patients as similar facilities in the region. As staff continue to provide exceptional care and services and news of the dispensary spreads, patients are choosing our facility over others.
Greeting and treating an average of over 600 patients per month is no easy task. The community has asked us to build additional housing to enable the Tanzanian government to dispatch additional medical staff. This will allow the dispensary to continue to provide exceptional care to the growing number of community members who are traveling greater distances for treatment as the facility's reputation grows.
Plans are underway to build additional housing for Sukenya dispensary staff in 2017. Please support this very important project by making a gift today.
*Patient numbers for June, July, August, and September of 2015 are an average of the total patients who visited the dispensary over those four months.
Happy Holidays from FoTZC!
We hope you are enjoying the 2015 copy of The Focus! We are proud of what we have accomplished in 2015, and we are particularly excited to get started on our list of upcoming projects. We have raised about half of the money required to build a new boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu Secondary School, and we still plan to finish that project before the rains come in April, so we need your help!
If you have not already made a gift to FoTZC this year, we hope you'll join us in supporting Tanzanian communities. If you'd like to give a gift in honor of a loved one, we will send them a card notifying him or her of your generous gift. Please make a gift today!
The Focus is Here!
This year's copies of The Focus have arrived! They should be arriving in your mailbox over the next week; we hope that you enjoy reading about what we have been up to this year and what we are planning for 2016.
We hope you'll help us by making a gift during this holiday season! We need to raise enough money to build a new boys' dormitory at Soit Sambu Secondary School before the rains come in April. We need $132,000 to do this, and every gift helps! To learn more, please visit our featured project page.