Check out the ETI Newsletter for May. We’re half-way to our funding goal and have a Guest Blog by Dr. Bagonza on Tanzania’s new president. Read on.

1. YOUR SUPPORT MAKES AN IMPACT
Many thanks to those who helped ETI reach its May funding goal early – on May 11th! Your generosity earned us a 5K matching grant, so now we are over 1/2 way to our fundraising goal of $194,000! You have pushed us closer to standing up the juice processing plant in Karagwe and as always, have inspired us in our work.

Funds from Educate Tanzania Donors are helping people in rural Tanzania create their own prosperous future; free from poverty. Karagwe University College of agriculture – KARUCO – that ETI helped build, was established to raise incomes by teaching entrepreneurial practices, farm technology, and efficient methods of planting, fertilizing, cultivating and harvesting crops with greater yields and strong connections to viable markets. But more is needed.

The next step is to build Rural Opportunity Centers (ROCs).

WHY ROCs?
ROCs provide landing pads for KARUCO graduates to start businesses. For example: A KARUCO Graduate will open a farm implement rental cooperative at the ROC where area farmers can rent a tractor, a farm implement such as a plow, and can secure services of a trained operator to help prepare their land in less than one full day. This is a stark improvement to the way of the hand-hoe where it takes one week or more for a collaborating group of farmers to cultivate one plot and then move on to the next farmer’s plot. Profits from the ROCs will bring income for the business owners and employees, and will also provide reinvestment funds to sustain and prosper the ROC. Design plans (BE Design, NY) are complete for a food processing center at the ROC. When built, students will bring crops from KARUCO plots for processing into juices and packaged for sale to viable markets.

BE Design Bruce Engel Architects (NY)

2. WHY PINEAPPLE JUICE PROCESSING?
Karagwe’s people produce some of the most beautiful and delicious pineapple in the world, but often earn very little from the fruits of their labor. Farmers – mostly women – toil with a hand-hoe under the Tanzanian sun. Then they carry or bike raw pineapples to market ten or more kilometres away. Markets burst with all the same produce, and therefore, the result is very little income for such intense effort. ETI and KAD are changing this. Together, we have completed the site review and design plans, subsurface assessment, project management plan and layout. There is broad-scale local support and enthusiasm as surveyed by the University of Minnesota research teams. All we need is funding so we can begin construction.

Construction of the pineapple processing plant will:

raise incomes
ensure gender equity
reduce crop waste
improve community health
implement environmentally sustainable best-practices.

Be part of the story.

LEADERSHIP CHANGES IN TANZANIA
CLICK HERE to read the full Guest Blog and summary on Tanzania’s new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan. This Guest Blog is by Rev. Dr. Benson Bagonza, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, Karagwe Diocese (KAD).

Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of the Republic of Tanzania

“Samia is a studious, meticulous and diplomatic person.. For obvious reasons, she has a gender agenda and makes it clear that it is her time as well as women’s time…In her, optimism is high from many circles including the international community.” Read more.

3 STRAIGHT-FORWARD WAYS TO DONATE
1. MAIL
Educate Tanzania,
91 Snelling Ave No, Suite 210
St Paul, MN 55104

2. ONLINE
http://educatetanzania.org/donatenow/

3. CLICK DONATE