UK Volunteers Meeting, 9 November

Apologies if you've had problems finding our main website lately - it's been down for some time but we will get it back up as soon as possible. In the meantime, we're going to resurrect this blog to keep you up-to-date, and hopefully put a widget into the new website (when it appears) so news from this blog appears there too.

In the meantime, there is a page for Hoja on COCO's website, which can be found here. Feel free to direct anyone there.

Hoja is looking very exciting these days. Yesterday we held a volunteers' meeting at Julia's house in London, attended by around 15 people, to discuss progress and future plans.

Lucy from COCO was there, to tell us about her recent visit to Tanga ward, and showed us what she'd seen and how she thinks the project is going, which seems to be around 95% positive (Lucy has corrected me to 100%!).

COCO have been kind enough to support the Hoja Project for some time now, and are taking on the Vocational Training Centre being built there, which is hugely appreciated, as it would be a massive project to be taken on by volunteers.

A number of us also gave accounts of our impressions and feelings when we have visited Tanga and Mpandangindo in the past, and it was reassuring to hear how positive everyone felt about the project.

Some of the day was also set aside for discussing fundraising and awareness raising ideas, and there certainly seemed to be a general feeling that we would like to put on some bigger events and get some smaller regular events going as well. Watch this space.

Join Me Pencils

A big thank you to my friend Zena Johnson, who has been selling personalised Join Me pencils and giving the money to the Hoja Project. She raised £204 at the last (and I believe final) count, and a whole bunch of Gift Aid declarations landed on my doormat this morning, so we'll be raising a bit more in Income Tax donations too.

In other news you'll notice that I have been adding pictures to make the website a bit more appealing. Hopefully that will be a sustained effort. So far all of the pictures have come from a visit to Mpandangindo in October by Paul Temple. Paul is from the more experienced Luhimba Project, which is a charity helping Luhimba village, near to Mpandangindo.

The Durham Firewalk

...has raised over £300 on the justgiving page alone. I lost count and gave up around that point. It also seems that no one has lost the ability to walk since the event (since Saturday), so all-in-all excellent news. I'm sure Julia will let me know exactly how much has been raised from the event. They were collecting moneys at the event and handing out the sparkly new regular donation leaflets that I'd whipped up on my laptop the night before, so the possibilities are endless.

So a big THANK YOU to everyone who took part in that.

I'll update this post when we have an idea of how much was raised. And add photos if I'm sent any.

[Edit 2nd Feb: Well, I'm told the total is actually around three or four grand. Bloody marvellous. I'm dead jealous and it makes me feel quite lazy for the miniscule amount I've raised personally. Well done everyone. And thank you.]