It’s time that I wrote a bit about the time that I spent in Africa at the start of the year. Being more precise, I was in Kenya and Tanzania with David Hewitt and Carna Hodge from my church.
David Hewitt set up something called The Africa Fund in 2000 and I’ve been helping here and there with publications for fundraising and the website since then. At the end of 2005 the opportunity came up to go on the trip and everything all came together very quickly.
The main purpose of The Africa Fund – TAF for short – is to raise money for organisations that David visits and help them to help themselves. We ‘invest in virtuous circles’ – giving money, mostly to local churches, to support local projects. The money is raised here in Edinburgh and goes to people we know – that’s the difference.
Before going – even before talking to David about going – I got excited about the whole principle of micro-finance. This has done some amazing things to help people set up micro-enterprises (self-employment to you and me) and has been particularly profound in India and Bangladesh. There small amounts of money are lent to people wanting a bicycle so they can ferry people around.
It’s not a new thing in Africa either, but our involvement in running a micro-finance scheme has been relatively recent. In Moshi in northern Tanzania we gave some money for one to be set up. We call them revolving funds. The principle is that money is lent out by a responsible committee and when the loans are repaid more people can benefit from loans.
While travelling around, I was involved in talking to people to find out whether they would find a revolving fund useful. We’ve been able to give money to start new funds in Arusha in Tanzania (part of the Mkonoo offering in March 2006) and Kisumu in Kenya (general offerings). We hope to extend these to our Uganda contacts in 2007.
Anyway, for the moment, please give us some money! You can give money towards a goat, a bee hive or a revolving fund.
I’ve been mostly involved in the revolving fund side of things, so would prefer if you gave towards that, but I do understand the appeal of a goat.
Give anytime, but the sooner the better, and invest in a virtuous circle!