Made With Hope's 7th Birthday!

Our Impact in our 7th Year

It’s our 7th birthday! With another year under our belt, we thought it a great opportunity to reflect on all the amazing work our volunteers, partners and fundraisers have contributed to. As always, we continued in our quest to ensure every child living in rural Tanzania has access to a quality education to break the cycle of living in poverty.

What we’ve achieved

In November, we started our successful 6th year with the hiring of CHETI NGO’s first ever Community Development Worker, Hussein. This was an instrumental step in allowing CHETI NGO and Made With Hope to extend our reach by partnering with three new Government Schools. Hussein has already played a critical role in engaging the communities we work in, and ensuring we are responsive to the needs and opinions of the wider community. We are so grateful for the remarkable work he has achieved.

In December 2019, we achieved another milestone as the drinking water for CHETI Primary and CHETI Secondary was confirmed to no longer contain any fluoride! With the installation of new rainwater harvesting tanks, it’s no longer necessary for water to be delivered by the Made With Hope tractor. The water delivered by the tractor was drawn from the Arusha mains, and had a fluoride level of 7.6mg/l, well above WHO guidelines, risking damage to teeth, bones and brain development. But, now with the new rainwater tanks, that don’t contain any fluoride, we know that the children are drinking safe and healthy water. With the grant money awarded by One Kind Act we have built 21 new rainwater harvesting tanks across 4 schools, creating a rainwater harvesting capacity of over 100,000 litres! We installed 7 tanks across CHETI Primary and CHETI Secondary, 8 at Maweni Primary and 6 at Mshikamano Primary. In total, these new tanks have benefited 1,500+ students.

December continued to be a successful month for us, as we sold our Made With Hope Advent calendar, stuffed full of delicious chocolates, during the festive period, which were a huge hit. And before we knew it, a new year was upon us! With a new year, came the opportunity to reflect on our goals. We committed to scaling our hand washing project to 5 more schools, launching a successful Menstrual Hygiene Management project in 5 schools, and building and renovating classrooms, and toilets.

The Effect of the Pandemic

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic our objectives had to shift. Launches for projects were put on hold, as we threw all our energy into aiding the community in battling this virus. Our Emergency Hand Washing Appeal was scaled up as we set a target of £10,305 to let us build sinks with a water supply, provide soap and deliver hygiene training in all our partner schools. As a result, we managed to construct reliable handwashing stations, consisting of 14 water taps and 4 soap dispensers, for 3 of our partner schools (Mshikamano, Maweni and Majimoto). Additionally, we implemented a 4-week handwashing & hygiene training program for 1690 students, aged between six and eight, and more than 25 teachers.

We also teamed up with CHETI to provide food packages to the teachers, many of whom are widows, mothers, and fathers. In an effort to be able to provide funding for these vital projects, we hosted virtual pub quizzes for 11 weeks where we had over 100 participating teams and hundreds of people taking part!

Students receiving their Menstrual Products after the MHM workshop

Another key impact that we have made in our 6th year is the launching of our Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) programme, that launched on the 17th of August. We have provided MHM education for 353 girls (aged 11 and older) in five schools through educational workshops on menstruation and puberty, and have provided access to sustainable menstrual products to manage their periods. We have also built girls toilets with ‘period friendly’ cubicles and are launching an MHM Teacher Training project in December 2020, in which 6 local teachers will be trained in MHM so that the programme can continue to thrive. This was all made possible by partnering with Femme International and Giving2Girls who helped us make our goal of empowering and supporting girls in Arusha a reality.

Amazing projects like these would not have been possible without the tireless dedication of our fundraisers, volunteers and partners, and the dedication of those involved- like Martha, who gave her 7th Birthday to Made With Hope, as she chose to fundraise for us after her teacher gave an assembly on Made With Hope! Acts such as this continue to make our work possible, and for that we are so very grateful.

On to the future!

This past year has been a challenge, but we can’t wait to see the impact that we will be able to achieve in our 7th year as a charity. If you’re interested in continuing to hear about our projects and want to receive regular updates on what we achieve in the following year, follow us on our social media channels on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn or sign up to our newsletter here.

Thankyou!

Written by Molly Deegan