Why leave a legacy to the Tanzania Development Trust?

Helping the poorest communities in Tanzania

Projects funded by TDT help the poorest communities in Tanzania. Typically, they have the potential to help break the cycle of poverty and change lives for decades to come.

Legacies and in memoriam donations are, by their nature, less predictable than many other forms of donation, but they are extremely important to TDT’s work.  They are therefore a fitting memorial, especially for people with a connection with Tanzania. Often it is a comfort for surviving relatives to know that their memory lives on.

From 2010 to early 2019, more than £280,000 has been donated to TDT in legacies and in memoriam donations, roughly a quarter of TDT’s income during that period. The graph below shows how ‘lumpy’ such legacies can be, but also how a significant sum can boost spending across more than one year.

Three major legacies – the ‘Woods legacy’ in 2010/2011, and those from Christine Lawrence, who passed away in 2011, and Ian Gibson, who died in 2012 – transformed TDT’s project funding in the middle years of the current decade. But smaller sums, which can often wholly- or part-fund a project, are just as welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christine Lawrence’s gift funded projects as diverse as fish ponds in Karagwe, text books at at Kibeta Secondary School near Bukoba, power at the remotely situated Bulyakashaju and Kibanga Secondary Schools in Muleba District, solar installations at two very remote dispensaries, and a dairy and chicken project supporting those living with HIV/AIDS in Shinyanga. Julian Marcus commented in TDT’s 2012-13 Annual Report: “I was very glad in the tour of 27 projects my wife Ann and I made in January to present several with plaques recording the fact their funding came from the bequest of Bibi Christine who loved their country so deeply.”

Ian Gibson’s bequest funded projects in Mtwara, where he had been born, and also provided TDT’s ‘seed funding’ for the Mugumu Safe House. In addition, Ian’s executors asked that a sum be designated for improvement of the administration of the Trust, and this enabled the setting up of TDT’s web-based project database.

More recently, legacies or in-memoriam donations have been received from BTS members or their relatives in memory of Betty Wells, Jane Carroll, Derek Ingram, Hugh Wenban-Smith, Mary Read and Sheila Lovell. With TDT’s emphasis on community-level projects in the poorest regions, and promise that “100% of all donations received will be spent on projects in Tanzania”, all will leave an enduring legacy in a country that they loved.