Where are they from?

Sponsors of the School of St Jude live in 23 different countries. Most of them are in Australia as the following list shows.

Australia -- 1331
England -- 36
Ireland -- 31
USA -- 31
New Zealand -- 30
Canada -- 14
Northern Ireland -- 9
Tanzania -- 5
Italy -- 5
UAE -- 3
Netherlands -- 2
Singapore -- 2
Germany -- 2
These countries are home to one sponsor -- Japan, PNG, Sth Africa, India, Austria, Scotland, Senegal, Denmark, Dominican Republic, France.

How is that for networking?

These sponsors fund the everyday expenses of the school. New buildings and other development is funded through donations.

MDG African success story

A picture tells a thousand words and this one says SUCCESS loud and clear.


This graph from William Easterly’s paper, How the Millennium Development Goals are unfair to Africa shows the great strides made by Sub-Saharan African countries in working towards universal primary education.

African countries have made massive progress in the past 40 years so that the gap between African countries and other developing countries is now minor. Easterly notes that despite this huge achievement, African countries will be labelled ‘failure’ if they don’t achieve 100% by 2015 because the Millennium Development Goal for education is expressed in absolute terms.

Supporters of the School of St Jude know that they are part of this remarkable achievement. Better than that, supporters know that the kids at St Jude’s are getting a fantastic, high-quality education worthy of their talents.

So, don’t feel disheartened when you read that Sub-Saharan African countries won’t achieve the MDGs, a fresh look at the data can show that they have made very good progress. We'll just keep working at it, shall we?

William Easterly's paper is published at the Brookings Institute.

Norway continues support for Tanzania

Just one week after Tanzania and her 19 major development partners concluded a comprehensive annual review of general budget support, Norway has committed to another five years of budget support for Tanzania.

Norway will give US$72m p.a. between 2007-2011.

Tanzania Finance Minister Zakia Meghji said,

Norway continues to be among the champions of the General Budget Support modality of aid delivery, which is the Tanzanian government's preferred mechanism because it minimises transaction costs and builds the country's capacity through the use of Government structures and systems. The aid also enhances accountability and good governance.

This aid commitment extends beyond one year and is an important response to Tanzania's appeal to her development partners to facilitate medium-term expenditure planning for better coherence and resources allocation.

According to the Norwegian ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Jon Lomoy, the funding is aimed at ensuring that Tanzania achieves millennium development goals of reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.

According to him, infant mortality declined from 95/1000 live births in 2002 to 68/1000 last year while under-five mortality from 154/1000 live births to 133/1000 live births.

We still have a long way to go to achieve the intended targets of reducing infant mortality to 50/1000 live births by 2010 and reduce child mortality to 75/1000 live births.

Organisations like the School of St Jude that rely on donations need to have some certainty about future donations and also some flexibility about how to spend the money.

Your regular donations help the School with on-going running costs and to plan for future developments. And your donations are helping Tanzania meet the Millennium Development Goal of Primary School education for girls and boys.