Changing Lives in Tanzania

Here at Blake we are committed to helping others and, with millions of children throughout the world who have no access to an education, we are proud to be working with the School In A Bag charity to deliver our aim, providing what could be the passport out of a life of hardship and poverty…

In our latest project with the charity, we succeeded in supplying learning equipment to children from extremely impoverished circumstances in the Iringa region of Tanzania.

In carrying out this project, we were privileged to collaborate with IRUDI (Iringa Rural Development Initiative), a non-governmental organization local to the region whose work is invaluable in improving the lives of those in the villages of the wider Iringa community.

We worked closely with the President of the organisation, Willhard Mgbolea, who played a key part in enabling us to achieve our aim of delivering our 120 SchoolBags to children from the Lyamgungwe and Malagosi primary schools, two rural schools situated some 45-55km from Iringa town.

With the majority of the population engaged with peasant farming in these areas, there are such difficult living conditions and extreme poverty that some families cannot even afford to buy their young ones a pen or pencil: the most basic of learning equipment.

As a result of a terrible HIV pandemic, many of these children have also lost one or both of their parents, leaving them responsible for the care of younger siblings or their remaining parent, some of whom are in a very weak state and require close care and assistance.

Distributing our SchoolBags

When planning this project, it was very important to us that our donations had the biggest impact possible and the SchoolBags were distributed to those areas where the children were in the greatest need.

Once this was established, our team commenced with the purchasing of the learning equipment and the distribution of the bags, which took place on 10th October.

As always, supplying these children with the learning equipment they were so desperately seeking was a truly heart-warming experience, and it was incredible to see the excitement on their faces as they received their very own bag and the beginning of something that could transform their lives forever.