Charity: Tanzania Development Trust

TDT is a UK-registered charity founded 50 years ago that operates in the more remote regions of Tanzania. Its objective is to help the very poorest people to help themselves. Because it is relatively small (turnover £250-300,000 p.a.) it focuses on girls’ education, clean water, and small income-generating projects. It is run entirely by volunteers, in both the UK and Tanzania, with no offices or paid staff. 100% of all money raised is spent on projects in Tanzania. It has 18 volunteers in Tanzania helping village communities to develop suitable projects, and 20 volunteers based in the UK, mostly experienced professionals who have lived and worked in Tanzania in the past; they evaluate individual projects and visit Tanzania regularly at their own expense to monitor and supervise the projects for which they are responsible. The projects themselves are implemented by a network of local partners, mostly NGOs or CBOs (community-based organisations). TDT typically sponsors around 40 small projects p.a. Most are under £6,000 in size, and benefit between 50 and 1,500 people per project. Brief descriptions of recent projects can be found on the TDT web site www.tanzdevtrust.org/projects It also has a longer-term relationship with four “flagship” projects: a school in Tabora for girls who have been denied access to education because of pregnancy; a vocational training centre for profoundly deaf young people near Dodoma; a single-village integrated development programme in Singida; and an agriculture-based community development programme near Kigoma.   TDT acts as the international voice for these projects, raising money from Trusts and Foundations outside of Tanzania that local NGOs are ill-equipped to approach, whilst providing donors with reassurance that the project will be well-run and all expenditures properly accounted for.