Path To Africa

Who We Help

Hope Village Orphanage

In general, PTA chooses one project on which to focus its resources, while assisting other local projects with advice and linking them with suitable volunteers and possible sources of funding.

Path To Africa has chosen to use most of our resources to support a small orphanage called Hope Village for Orphaned & Vulnerable Children. Hope was founded in February 2011 by a young Tanzanian woman, Ceccyliah Fadhili, who has always felt that it was her calling in life to help children in need. She saved as much money as she could throughout her teenage years and early adult life and in early 2011 began to look for children in need of her help.

With the love and commitment Ceccilyah has, partnered together with financial assistance from Path To Africa, Hope is now the safe and loving home for eight children aged between 10-15 years old. It is not a typical orphanage and Ceccyliah treats these children very much as if they are her own. All of these children started their lives in a way no child should have to, however thanks to Ceccilyah they now have an amazing family of brothers and sisters.

Our current and ongoing goals are....

To pay for the house rent.
To ensure that the children are receiving a good quality of education.
To provide food.
To provide a salary to the house girl and guard.
To provide a salary to a teacher, who assists the children with homework and extra learning.
To provide transport to/from school during the wet season, when walking is too difficult.
To provide all medical needs.
To provide clothing and personal effects.

Corner Stone Children's Centre

For those who have been following PTA from the beginning, you will know about our involvement with the Corner Stone Children's Centre.

In 2006 Path to Africa identified an orphanage in the village of Mvuleni which was in need of assistance, and during the course of 16 months fundraised roughly USD$32,000 which was used mainly in construction at the centre. During this time PTA became aware of the acute poverty in the village and lack of access to basic needs of many of the local people, including food, safe drinking water, education and health care. When the work with this orphanage drew to a close, PTA looked into the possibilities of linking with a well established local organization to continue working in Mvuleni village. It was at this time that PTA was introduced to the work of local community based organization, Tanzania Children’s Concern.

IMG_3299.JPG - large Tanzania Children’s Concern (TCC) is a local organisation originally based in the Pasua region of Moshi. Registered in 2005, the aim of this organisation is to help vulnerable children within the local community. The organisation obtained their own funding and built an English medium primary school, currently with approximately 200 students. The students attending the school greatly varies and while some students pay the regular fees to attend the school, approximately 30% of the students are not in a position to pay. Many of these 30% were surveyed and assessed by Path To Africa and considered to be most in need of assistance. These students have been provided with free placements which includes their schooling, lunch daily, uniforms and books.

At the end of the first year of the school being open (end of 2011), the school finished number 1 in the Kilimanjaro region and number 4 in the country, for academic results. It continues to get extremely high results. For these children, there is hope that they will obtain a brilliant education level and therefore in future years, pull their families out of poverty.

Impressed with the hard work shown by TCC, Path to Africa agreed to work with them to help reach their goal, and so agreed to help build the Corner Stone Children’s Centre. This centre is located on the same land as the school and will provide housing to some of the children that are most in need, eg orphaned or from families who can not afford to look after them. The aim is to keep children within the community and so only those in dire need will be accommodated at the centre, while others that can be supported by families will be offered a free placement at the school.

How PTA helped..

Since beginning construction on this project in October 2009 PTA have given significant financial support. This support has been used to complete major phases of the building work, including...

Obtaining architectial drawings/design for the centre.
Laying the foundation.
Building the walls.
Building the roof.
Purchasing and installing all doors and windows.
Building the security house.
Electrical wiring.
Plumbing.
Toilet and shower installation.
Drilling a borehole (so they a have safe and consistent water supply).
Building the perimeter fence and gates.
Maintaining salaries for the security guard on site and social worker who is conducting surveys and assessing children most in need of school placement and possible placement into the centre.

While construction was going on, volunteers with PTA had been working with the school, carrying out English, Maths and sports lessons. On the building site they built a chicken coup, a vegetable garden and assisted with purchasing construction materials. In the community, volunteers organized awareness seminars (including HIV/AIDS, water related diseases, malnutrition etc), soccer coaching and women’s support groups.

We even had one group of volunteers build a house for a young 14 year old girl who has been orphaned and living by herself, in unimaginable circumstances.

In July of 2012 a large donor approached us, with available funds, that they were willing to donate. This meant that there was no longer a need for our involvement. There were two major advantages to this outcome; the centre was able to be completed far earlier than was possible for us and we were able to use our funds to support more small scale local projects such as Hope Village. Corner Stone Children's Centre is doing very well, under the management of TCC, providing a safe home for over 80 vulnerable children.