Tori, Super-Volunteer! - Sounds of Hope evening in Washington DC

Hurray for Tori, one of our best volunteers ever. Tori used to live in Dar es Salaam, and has now moved back to Washington DC with her husband Robert and very tall baby Bella.

A few weeks ago she organised a musical evening in Washington for Tanzania, and sent these gorgeous photos. It raised £216, which is wonderful and goes a long, long way in Africa. We're especially grateful to Tori for going to a huge amount of trouble to wire the money to our UK account, involving many trips to the bank and emails with our Treasurer.

You can see the photos here (I hope):

https://picasaweb.google.com/JodiandAlex/SoundsOfHopeForTanzanear?feat=directlink#

and here's a couple to whet your appetite:

The band

L to R: Mary (one of the organisers), Tori and Jodi, Tori's friend

Tanzanear Exec committee meeting, March 3rd 2011

The Exec Committee met this Thursday. We had a fine turnout: even our Dar-es-Salaam members joined us by Skype (which you can just about see in this photo). Georgia, a possible new member, was there, and Susan Pym, our newest addition. We were sad that Toshi couldn't partake of the excellent pork pies that were on offer.

It was a great meeting: we had invaluable feedback from Judith Roberts and Alison Sweeney-Bissett in Dar, and made significant progress to improving how we work (eg finance systems, membership database, planning the year, making sure we have all the right things in place to meet the rightly high standards set by the Charity Commission).

As always, many thanks to the Robertses for letting us use their house, even though Nigel had to do all the work this time, with Judith being in Tanzania.

You can just about see Judith on the computer screen (as Dar is three hours ahead, and the meeting was long, Alison had had to retire for the night by the time I took this) and then left to right are Stuart Middleton, John Middleton, Nigel, the back of Georgia's head, the remnants of some pork pies, and Susan Pym.