Amazing ability!

You should check out the December newsletter for Kim’s account of all the astonishing activities at the school in that single month!

This is a great newsletter because Kim is able to give us a picture of the remarkable capacities of Gemma to organise and encourage her large and growing team of staff, volunteers, parents, students and supporters.

Lunch for 2,400? No worries!

She certainly has a talent for running major events. The final school assembly was astonishing! 2,400 people were transported, seated, presented with awards and then fed!

School Assembly December 2006

Kim says that lists and schedules had been drawn up well in advance to include teams of workers involving every single person on the school grounds (even a chap who’d just wandered in to visit a friend for lunch) and preparations had been going on since lunchtime the day before when a thousand chairs had been placed in lines beside the hall to supplement the benches inside, a bus load of bananas was peeled, mountains of cabbages chopped, 350 kgs of meat diced, hundreds of tomatoes, capsicums, onions and carrots sliced, vats of water boiled, serving tables arranged, food bowls stacked, napkins prepared and the school grounds mowed and raked.

Gemma fosters a cooperative spirit in all the school’s activities. This is one of the core values that are transmitted by the school. There is such a good vibe about this place that people just WANT to be part of it. Kim says –

The most rewarding part of the whole procedure was watching the incredible team work as EVERY member of the staff pitched in and did his or her bit – drivers worked with heads of academic departments to chop tomatoes; the brickies served coleslaw with the security guards. And while teachers joined the gardeners to ladle out the cooked bananas, students stood with visiting Rotarians to offer soap and water for hand washing. Every person was vital to the success of the day … and it truly was a huge success. Not only did everyone have a meal within 15 minutes but there was time and enough for seconds!

The rewards of your contribution are massive. These children and their parents know through and through the life-changing value of the education offered at the school. Here is a mother of one of the 200 children who were accepted into the school in December.

A joyful mother hugs her newly-equipped daughter

What a smile! This small child is at the beginning of a wonderful journey that carries future hopes for her whole family. A lot rests on her shoulders. But with the support of her family, the school and supporters world-wide, she will realise her potential and break the cycle of grinding poverty that passes from generation to generation.

Peter Singer – Professor of Ethics

Peter Singer, an Australian, and the professor of ethics at Princeton looks at the ethics of philanthropy in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Peter Singer, Professor of Ethics at Princeton

He asks how our beliefs about the value of human life square with our actions in a world in which more than a billion people live at a level of affluence never before known, while roughly a billion others struggle to survive on the purchasing-power equivalent of less than $US1 a day.
He applauds the actions of the world’s richest people, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet in pledging more than $US67 billion directed towards the world’s poorest.

Singer then analyses the incomes of the richest Americans – the top 0.01%, the top 0.05%, the top 1% and the top 10%.

He figures that the 14,400 people in the top 0.01% who earn an average of $US12.8 million could give a quarter of their income without hurting. The next categories are asked to give 20%, 15% and 10%. On his figures, this philanthropy would yield $US404 billion.

Extending this scheme worldwide would provide $US808 billion annually for development aid. That's more than six times what the task force chaired by Jeremy Sachs estimated would be required for 2006 in order to be on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Of course, it is very easy to do this kind of armchair calculation; the difficulty lies in persuading the mega-rich to share their wealth. The fine leadership of Gates and Buffet has defined the first decade of the 21st century as a new "golden age of philanthropy", but it won't appeal to most rich people.

The effort to bring our actions in line with our values is an ongoing personal challenge for most of us. If you value human life and believe that equality is an important principle, you can act to support these principles by helping the School of St Jude to Fight Poverty through Education.

The school is one of those energetic, well-run and successful projects that are making a difference to hundreds of lives. Your donation, large or small, will be well-used.

Tanzanian women – world leaders

The new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has appointed a Tanzanian woman for the top job, as the Deputy Secretary General. Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro is currently the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Republic of Tanzania. Prior to this post, she was the Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children. In her academic career, Dr. Migiro rose to the rank of a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Dar-es-Salaam.

Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro – UN Deputy Secretary General

Mr. Ban said, "She is a highly respected leader who has championed the cause of developing countries over the years. Through her distinguished service in diverse areas, she has displayed outstanding management skills with wide experience and expertise in socio-economic affairs and development issues.

"I have deep confidence in and respect for her, and intend to delegate much of the management and administrative work of the Secretariat, as well as socio-economic affairs and development issues, under a clear line of authority to ensure that the Secretariat will function in a more effective and efficient manner."

Dr Migiro has a master's degree in law from the University of Dar es Salaam and a doctorate in law from Germany's Konstanz University. She lives with her husband and two daughters.
With the UN appointment, she will be the highest ranking woman at the United Nations and the second-highest among all UN officials.

This appointment shows that, with the benefit of a good education, Tanzanians can contribute at a global level. Your support of the School of St Jude will help ensure that hundreds of capable children from the poorest families will get an excellent education, making them the future leaders of Tanzania, and the world.

Fair Trade coffee

My dear daughter Blanche has an eye for the appropriate! At Christmas she was very pleased with herself because she found some Fair Trade coffee from Tanzania to include in her Christmas gift to me.


She makes me smile at her thoughtfulness.
Fair Trade is an important scheme that promotes economic development in poor countries through trade.

Fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, which seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers. Fair trade organizations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.

Trade is a vital element in the mix needed to lift countries out of poverty. However Alex Nicholls, social entrepreneurship professor at Oxford University says that "within developing countries, market conditions are not such that producers can unambiguously be declared to be better off through trade." The existence of market failures lessens the capacity of trade to lift developing countries out of poverty.

Wikipedia notes that fair trade products generally account for 0.5-5% of all sales in their product categories in Europe and North America. In October 2006, over 1.5 million disadvantaged producers worldwide were directly benefiting from fair trade while an additional 5 million benefited from fair trade funded infrastructure and community development projects.

Here’s a personal aside – Australia has a culture of good coffee which was brought to us largely by Italian migrants post-WWII. So there is no excuse for the cultural imperialism of American fast-food outlets in the form of Starbucks. When you drink the watery filtered stuff that passes for coffee in US restaurants and cafes you can see why Starbucks swept the nation. But it would be a sad state of affairs if the same happened here. So, I tend not to use the few Starbucks cafes that have opened in Australia.

However, Starbucks rose mightily in my regard when I discovered that they use Fair Trade coffee. Of course my estimation slid again when I discovered that only 3.7% of their coffee is Fair Trade. Ah well – a little is better than none. Look here to learn about an activist campaign to encourage Starbucks to give greater support to Fair Trade coffee.

For more information about Fair Trade you can check out Wikipedia, or the Fair Trade Organisation of Australia and NZ.

When you are shopping, you can look for the Fair Trade logo on goods you buy. Your retail dollar is a vote, and every dollar counts.


The Fair Trade movement is just getting underway in Australia, so look out for more Fair Trade goods appearing in the major supermarkets in the next year or two.

I wonder if they grow coffee in the north of Tanzania, near Arusha? Do some of the parents of kids at St Judes work on coffee farms? Maybe I’ll find out when we visit later this year!

School visitors

The first building at the School of St Jude was started in 2002 by a working-party of Australian Rotarians. Each year, several groups of Rotarians come to help out at the school and do some sightseeing.

In an earlier post I showed the work accomplished by a group of Rotarians in September. Well, November saw the arrival of another group of eleven hard working Australian Rotarians who assembled the timber cut by the earlier working-party into around 170 desks and chairs for next year’s newly sponsored students.



While they were on the job, no one at the school could have a sleep-in because the group would be up at 6.00am hammering away! However they did a great job and by the time they had left had assembled around 170 desks and chairs. It’s great to know that all the new sponsored kids who will enroll next year won’t have to sit on the floor!!

After the rewarding work of making something useful, there is the fabulous chance to see the Serengeti!

Wildebeest migration – one of the Seven Wonders

The School has always welcomed visitors –

We love visitors! The children and staff love visitors! Even our supposedly ferocious Alsatian guard dogs love visitors! We are very proud of our school and so we enjoy being able to show it off. For this reason we have a special visitors program for people who would like to drop in for a day or up to two weeks and join in activities, explore the area or just relax and soak up the atmosphere in and around the school.

Visitors tend to fall into one of two categories: younger backpacker types who are travelling the world in an adventurous way, and older people who wish to contribute their skills and energy to a worthwhile project that is making a real difference. I think this kind of travel is called ‘values-based travel’ or ‘authentic tourism’ some such marketing category.

We are excited because it looks like we may be able to visit Tanzania this year. There are some good flight deals in May, so that might be the time!

REMINDER: The ‘3 peaks 3 weeks’ challenge starts on 6 January. Ten women will climb three mountains (Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Kenya and Mt Meru) in three weeks as a fundraiser. The School of St Jude is one of the beneficiaries, and they have raised an amazing $220,000 so far. Check out!

The task ahead

The very poorest countries depend on foreign aid for their basic functioning. Major aid comes through the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN and donor countries. Because they hold the purse strings, these donors have a strong influence on African policy.

School enrollment rates in sub Saharan countries soared for two decades until 1980, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund demanded that African governments slash public spending to deal with a wave of economic crises. As spending stagnated, so did schools. During the 1980s, the region’s enrollment rates languished. In Mali, the spending cuts meant that all but three teacher training institutes were closed. No wonder education suffered.


You could say that the current education standards in Africa are a direct result of the actions of Western donor countries. Donors seem to have seen the error of their ways and they have reignited the push for basic education in the 1990s. Wealthy nations and global lenders like the World Bank increased contributions to basic education in sub-Saharan Africa by almost half in just four years, to an average of $723 million a year in 2003 and 2004, according to Unesco.

Yet even this will not enable the region to meet the United Nations’ millennium target of assuring all children a sixth-grade education by 2015. At current spending levels, the World Bank estimates, that will take sub-Saharan nations another 50 years. Achieving it within the next decade would require a ninefold increase in aid, Unesco’s experts say. They argue that donors should shift funds to Africa from other, less needy parts of the world and to primary schools from higher education.

Today’s development experts say that education is the region’s best hope. Only by educating children through at least the sixth grade, they say, can Africa attack the rise in poverty that has left it trailing the rest of the developing world. In sub-Saharan Africa, the average adult’s schooling ends at the third grade. Two in five are illiterate. No nation has ever achieved rapid and sustained economic growth with a population so poorly educated, the World Bank says.

There's a good article in the New York Times on this topic.

The School of St Jude provides quality education for 850 children from the poorest families around Arusha, Tanzania. It is a centre of excellence that is supported by private donors from Australia and other countries.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! May 2007 see great strides towards meeting the Millenium Development Goals and the Fight against Poverty.

Sydney, as usual, welcomed the New Year with a major fireworks party. One million spectators gathered at hundreds of spots around Sydney Harbour on New Year's Eve to witness the world's biggest ever fireworks display. The $4 million celebrations, dubbed "A Diamond Night in the Emerald City", celebrated the Diamond anniversary of the Harbour Bridge, which celebrates its 75th birthday in March.

Fireworks on Sydney Harbour. Source: Sydney Morning Herald

I tried to stay awake so we could make the half hour drive to a viewing spot I know, but I fell asleep on the couch and Hal went off alone.

I woke this morning to the sound of good soaking rain – an auspicious start to 2007. I hope the five year drought breaks this year. We find ourselves pulled between two opposite thoughts – the hopeful voice says ‘it must rain again sometime!’, while the fearful voice says ‘with global warming, rainfall will drop and the dams will never be full again’.

Are we facing an era of instability and war as countries and communities fight over dwindling water resources? Is this fueling the current war in Ethopia/Somalia? It is hard to see the large patterns when you are right up close. A longer timeframe will make it clearer.

In the meantime, I plug away at doing my bit, making my actions count.