A round-up of our fund-raising work to help orphaned children in Tanzania.

VATW's ongoing work to raise funds for and support the development of schools in Tanzania is moving forward at a great pace. This year we have raised nearly £3,000 through download sales and other fund-raising events. This will go a long way in our current aim to develop some sports facilities at the school and help provide new textbooks and resources for learning.

We would like to again thank all of the schools and youth organisations that contributed to making the Lighting Up The Flame song/video such a great success. It is really good that together, through music, that we are able to help the children of Tanzania in this way.

Schools - partnering with St Mary's School in Njombe
Some schools have chosen to join in the work further by partnering with our current main school in Njombe to continue the fund-raising - holding school concerts and events to raise money. This will be a major development for VATW and the Njombe Project across 2017. If you would like YOUR school to join with us in this way, please do contact us and we can help you by providing lots of free resources - musical and other items - to support your fund-raising events.

We would like to feature one school that has provided amazing support during 2016 - Bengeworth Academy, Evesham, Worcestershire. Not only did the school take a full part in this year's Lighting Up The Flame  song project, but also sent 3 teachers over to work at St Mary's School in Njombe in October. This was a tremendous initiative which had a lot of impact on helping to develop the teaching and school development at St Mary's. Here is what the teachers had to say about their trip:

Our experience at St Mary's in Njombe: 

We spent an amazing 13 days in Tanzania, this included many days spent at St Mary's school, Njombe, getting to know children and staff and working alongside them to share experiences and ideas.  The children were really enthusiastic about their learning and just a joy to teach.  We were involved in the planning and teaching of a range of curriculum subjects including: Mathematics, English, Science, Geography, History and Physical Education.  The children enjoyed learning new sports such as Cricket, Rounders, Netball and Tag Rugby.  The standard 5 students produced some amazing African artwork, which is currently hanging in their classroom, looking very bright, cheerful and colourful!  We supported the teachers in making visual aids for classrooms and challenging their more able students.  We found the children to be extremely polite, respectful and full of songs they wanted to teach us.  They enjoyed learning 'Lighting up the flame' and begged us to teach them many more songs and especially loved the ones with actions, very fast learners indeed!  We would like to thank the teachers, sisters of the convent and children at St Mary's for sharing their wonderful school with us, they are all now very close to our hearts and we will endeavour to keep close links with the school in the future, so that we can continue to make a difference to each other's communities.  A life changing experience and visit that we will never forget!

Very well done Bengeworth Academy and especially well done to Tom

   Njombe children learning Lighting Up The Flame  and Tom, Rachel and Laura from Bengeworth Academy with 
some of the St Mary's Staff



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