I arrived in Tanzania 7 days ago and I am already feeling at peace. I arrived mid day and a friendly face greeted me at the airport. I then went to my favourite restaurant Fig and Olive to pick up my house keys and carried on home and to the grocery store to get properly set up. The first week was consumed with meetings to try to finalise obtaining land for a new project we are working on. Negotiating land contracts in Tanzania with foreign laws and understanding land use were never things I thought I would need to have in my arsenal, but lets just say in the past 8 years launching and running TFFT has taught me a WIDE range of things, a blessing I will never go a day without acknowledging.

People always are shocked my trips over are 6+ weeks, but in all honesty I never feel like it is enough. Maybe it is being with the team or loving the inspiration our scholars provide, or being out at schools and in the orphanages we work with seeing the determination and change first hand. It is combination I will never be able to get enough of.

This week I’ve seen a good deal of our older scholars, which has been nice. Spending time with the scholars in small groups has made it possible to genuinely know and understand how they are doing. Form 4 National Exam results came out last week, so we are celebrating today with those scholars, while also goal setting and talking through plans for their next steps.

We’ve also spent the first part of this week talking on different radio stations about orphan and vulnerable children and how quality education plays a role in ensuring their success. Its great to see these invitations come; it is a direct result of Anton’s work with the Media workshop and our advocacy work paying off. It is nice to see the local community believe they too can be a part of the change, impacting even just one person’s life!

This week ends with the Kilimanjaro Half Marathon. I am clearly running for more than exercise. I am running to advocate on behalf of our scholars. I am running to improve the state of this world. I am running to ensure TFFT has more tools to train teachers and develop life skills curriculum. While it isn’t the most fun, seeing as it’s 6.5 miles up and then 6.6 miles down, it has more meaning than any other race I have run. It has purpose and so does our work. I hope some of you will consider donating and helping me reach my goal. This morning I am 81% there and I have 4 days left – you can read more about it and donate here.

Thanks again for following along in the TFFT journey–know you to can be a part of this impact and we are happy to have the village behinds us making TFFT’s work possible!

All photos by The Image Is Found