By Natalie Sarrett
In Tanzania, many children don’t have the opportunity to receive a formal education.
From an early age, they are given responsibilities and roles within their families that are important to keep the community running: fetching water from wells miles away, feeding and herding livestock, helping their fathers in their trades, wrangling their younger siblings, cooking meals and more.
A Baptist church in the bush recognized the need for quality, local education in their community. Even kids who did go to school had to walk ten miles to go to school in the city, only getting home after dark. Because of safety issues, most girls in the village stopped attending city academies entirely once they came of age.
Eight years ago, this small Tanzanian church started a preschool with aid from Southern Baptists stateside. The school has now expanded to include preschool through third grade, with an additional grade being added each year.
The school provides one meal a day free of charge, and for many children, it is the only meal they will receive. Although there are three classrooms, the school had yet to have a kitchen or dining area built for the kids and was using open fires under trees to make the “cafeteria” lunches. When there were sandstorms or rain, the kids would return home from school with wet clothes and wind-beaten skin.
Because of your generosity, Send Relief had the opportunity to invest in this church’s ministry by providing the funds to build a kitchen, cafeteria hall and storage room for the food.
More than 150 children now have a safe, dry place to eat lunch at school because of you!
The pastor of the Baptist church involved in the project told Send Relief, “The entire area is speaking in amazement that such a building was built for a bush school. Their children are now being cared for in a great way—God be praised!”
This has been a wonderful testimony for the local church and has given them greater standing in their region. Many of the area’s community leaders are now sending their children to the school.
Your ongoing support is what makes accomplishments like these possible! To continue furthering education efforts like this around the globe, give to Send Relief today.
Natalie Sarrett writes for Send Relief.
Published June 4, 2020