PEN Trust had the opportunity to visit the Feed My Starving Children headquarters in Brooklyn Park, MN while in the US. After presenting the Board of Directors with a gift, we gave an update of food distributions throughout the Dodoma and Singida regions as well as highlighted further needs. FMSC with shipping help from Operation Blessing have generously donated a 40 foot container that will be arriving the first week of August 2006.
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Books For Africa continues to have a strong partnership with PEN Trust. While in the US, we had the opportunity to meet with Patrick Plonski, Executive Director, to meet the staff and tour the warehouse. Through the generous donation of the George Seymour Bissell Foundation, a 40 foot container will be arriving in September 2006.
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Part of the visit to the US included a trip to Ohio to visit partners there. Pastor David Bliss, wife Jill and daughter Rachel were our hosts for our stay in Bowling Green. Pastor Bliss has been a long time friend of PEN’s and comes to visit at least once a year.
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R. Donald Hawkinson, Attorney of Law, practicing in Minneapolis was instrumental in the formation of PEN of TZ. He was able to accommodate us into his busy schedule and help us understand the intricacies of the IRS paperwork and forms. He welcomed us to his home and will soon be coming to visit us here in Tanzania. Karibu sana!
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For six weeks, PEN Trust Directors, Mungwe ABC Athman and Andrea Wall were in the US. The main purpose of the visit was to register a sister NGO in the US named Poverty Eradication Network of Tanzania. (See separate story.) Other purposes were to connect with current partners and donors as well as create new partnerships. Although six weeks sounded like a long time - many partners and programs were not able to be visited - we sincerely apologize for that! Take a look at some of the people and projects we did have a chance to meet with…
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“Those who receive this privilege, therefore, have a duty to repay the sacrifice which others have made. They are like the man who has been given all the food available in a starving village in order that he might have strength to bring supplies back from a distant place. If he takes this food and does not bring help to his brothers, he is a traitor. Similarly, if any of the young men and women who are given an education by the people of this Republic adopt attitudes of superiority, or fail to use their knowledge to help the development of this country, then they are betraying our Union.”
By Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere
(The first president of post-colonialist Tanzania)
Mungwe ABC Athman is a Tanzanian that has taken the words of Mwalimu Nyerere to heart. After attending the local village primary school he went on to secondary school, college and finally received a Master’s degree in Architecture from Leuven Catholic University in Belgium. Despite his career life as an Architect, Mungwe has devoted time to the non profit, Poverty Eradication Network Trust (PEN Trust) which together with other partners is helping the poor within Central Tanzania to help themselves. The program focuses on short term needs (food, medication, clothing), mid term needs (micro financing, cooperative initiatives) and long term needs (scholarships, school construction, health, books and other educational materials).
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WODECHE (Women’s Development and Children’s Education) is a non profit founded by Sulafa Mohamed. She started this program to help take care of 30 orphans that were located in her immediate neighborhood in Dodoma. Her program helps orphans that have been relocated into their extended families’ homes or with strangers, which is how most orphans in Tanzania are taken care of.
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