A rewarding charity mission!

This was an immensely rewarding, humbling, challenging and life changing charity mission. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those you donated and to pray that you are rewarded in this life and the next. Your donations have no doubt helped many for years to come.

To summarise, we built 2 wells, 3 school extensions, and public toilets; we handed out mosquito nets, wheelchairs, bicycles, school stationery, carpenter tools and tools to environmental teams; we worked on livelihood projects putting up beehives, planting fruit trees, giving out goats and creating businesses for those who were poor but wanted earn their own means of sustenance. All in all I hope and I believe that we left with a positive lasting impact on those villages.

Thirteen of us flew from the UK to Pangani, a poor district in the north of Tanzania. Collectively we raised£60,000 and the staff of Islamic Help Tanzania identified projects to work on in the poorest villages; these were Mtango, Mtonga and Boaza. These projects had started a week or two before we arrived and we were to help complete/finalise them. Our day started with early 7PM starts and consisted of continuous hard manual labour until around 5PM in the scorching African sun.

It was difficult for us to take in the situation of these people. Living in mud-huts with no water supply, sewers or electricity. They live the simplest of lives and yet are so humble and grateful! Amazing people we were blessed with to meet! The most shocking part of the trip was seeing their main water source; this was an hours walk in the heat and ended up being no more than just a large stagnant pond, live with insects and other life. We were expecting a river or at least a flowing stream! The most rewarding and exciting moment was down in the well, digging away. The proudest moment was in the orphan children's eco village, seeing the results of the positive work Islamic Help has done.

Please read on to find out the different projects we worked on through out the mission.

Please read the daily posts below to find out what exactly we got up to and how your donations helped the needy people of Pangani, Tanzania.