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.

New Committee members in a few years' time?

Lovely news  - previous Committee members Sharon and Fred Thomas have had beautiful, healthy twin baby boys. They were born on February 15th and weighed nearly 7lb each. I can't really remember details like this, so I don't know the exact weights. They are super!

Here's Sharon (who used to be Hon Sec) and Lucy (Tanzanear Chair) showing one of them off. The other one was asleep, apparently.

We send Sharon and Fred - and Arthur and Finbarr - lots of love and our very warmest congratulations. 

Volunteers being looked after by Alison Bissett

We currently have four young people kindly volunteering at the moment - Izzie, Lucy, Alex and Isla. Luckily for them, Alison Bisset, our lovely Committee member in Dar, is looking after them - showing them where to have fun and most importantly, upgrading them to relative luxury after the convent.

Here are two of them, texting (naturally)....

and here, finally, is a picture of Alison !

Exciting database reconciliation

Work goes in between Committee meetings, of course. This is John, our new Treasurer, and Lucy, spending a rainy January morning combining the newly computerised accounting records with the membership database. We expect the winter evenings to fly by as we finish this off.

Stuart, another Committee member, is John’s son. He brought us coffees occasionally, albeit with a rather grudging attitude. And he forgot the sugar in Lucy’s.

John has just commented that he always likes to match his shirt to the wallpaper, but this does require changing his outfit  quite often.

Next up, I might try to post some videos of school.

New members of the Tanzanear Exec Committee

We're doing more and more in Tanzania, and the work is growing! So we're delighted to have some new Exec Committee members. After saying a sad goodbye to a few people in 2010 (Maggie retired after many years' excellent work, and Sharon and Fred left to prepare for having twins, after doing a huge amount to move the charity onto the next stage) we really needed some more hands.

Alison Bissett - see previous entry about the lockers - has kindly agreed to be our liaison person in Dar-es-Salaam itself. It makes a huge difference to have someone on the ground, and she's already being a huge help.

Susan Pym went to Tanzania last year as part of the St Colomba's work party, which renovated the girls' dormitory and made it a lovely place to stay. She fell in love with the school, even with having to clean loos, and we are looking forward to using her non-housework talents!

The finished work

Susan and her husband Hugh, in the dormitory that they helped to renovate.

I can put up a picture of the loo-cleaning if I get any special requests for this....

We also have two new "Appointed Members", who will represent Mary Hare School. More on this in the next article.

Thanks very much to our new Committee members for all that they've already done, and will do.