For Christmas this year, Mary is visiting her brother and his wife in the town of Mbeya, three hours drive away from the home Mary shares with her mother in Iringa, in western Tanzania. Here, she talks about the way she prepares for the holidays. (more…)

When Mary was in primary school, her father passed away, leaving her mother to raise seven children by herself on her wages of $8 a week. In 2003, her house burned to the ground, and the family lost everything. Consequently, when Mary passed the exams to move up to secondary school, her widowed mother did not have the funds to send her. Mary was overjoyed when Camfed stepped in last year to provide her with all the support she needed to continue her education, including a uniform, stationery and exercise books.

Without Camfed’s support, Mary says she would probably have ended up in Tanzania’s capital looking for work as a housegirl, a fate that befalls many young women in rural Tanzania, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Instead, she is now fourth in her class of 53 students, as well as being a school prefect. Camfed will continue to support Mary for the next four years, until she has finished secondary school.

Here, in the first of several installments, Mary gives us a glimpse into her daily life in her Tanzania.
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Camfed’s work in Zimbabwe is more vital now than ever before. As the economic situation continues to deteriorate, we are seeing more and more girls and boys dropping out of school. Families are finding it increasingly difficult to support their children’s education as they struggle to put food on the table. (more…)

by Ann Cotton, Camfed founder and executive director

Angeline Mugwendere, 26, fears that almost half of her classmates from primary school in rural Zimbabwe are HIV positive by now. Some of her fellow pupils have already died from related illnesses.

The statistics are chilling. Across Zimbabwe, more than 3,000 people die each week from AIDS. The official HIV infection rate is one in four. That rate is far higher in the desperately poor rural areas, where life expectancy for women is just 34. (more…)

by Winnie Farao, Camfed Zimbabwe manager

My trip to New York was an opportunity to talk on behalf of all the girls in rural Africa – to say what they would have said if they had got the chance. I wanted to tell people not just the story of my own education, but also to tell the story of the African girls. (more…)

by Ann Cotton, Camfed Founder & Executive Director

Last month, I was sitting in the headmaster’s office of a primary school in Samfya, in the heart of rural Zambia. Mr Ben Charma leads 46 teachers in his school of 1,700 children, more than half of whom have been orphaned by AIDS. (more…)