Church Mission Society (CMS) | Global Community

Andy and Susie Hart

Andy and Susie, with daughters Grace and Rosie, are working in partnership with the Anglican Church in Iringa, Tanzania. Andy is a vet and is working to improve the health of rural families’ livestock. Susie is a textile artist and teacher.

Susie has been working with the Diocese to establish ‘Neema Crafts Workshop’, a vocational crafts centre that provides training and employment for deaf and physically disabled people.

She started the centre in 2003, initially to meet the needs of young deaf people in the area, who were taught to make hand-made paper from elephant dung and maize leaves (among other unlikely but environmentally sustainable materials!).

The hand-made paper workshop flourished, physically disabled people were invited to participate shortly afterwards, and over the next three years over 70 people have been trained and employed in paper-making, bead-work, woven textiles, a gallery café, candle-making and most recently micro solar panel production and recycled glass.

Weekly Bible studies are held for all the participants, who come from different faith backgrounds, and many have made a personal commitment as a result.

Neema Crafts Workshop has had a considerable impact in changing negative attitudes towards people with disabilities locally. Traditionally they are considered as cursed and a burden on society, but now they have the opportunity to reach their creative potential and to support themselves and their families.

Andy works for the diocese in their rural development department. His role is to work alongside rural congregations to help them reach out to their communities in a practical way.

This has led Andy into a wide range of projects in different villages, not all directly veterinary related. His work seeks to be sustainable by undertaking projects that are either free or affordable to the villagers; this also allows the work to target the poorest in the communities.

Examples of some of the projects he is involved in are: Training teams of chicken vaccinators to vaccinate all village chickens for the commonest and most lethal chicken disease (Newcastle Disease) and using a cheap and effective eye-drop vaccine. This is paid for by the villagers and also enables the teams to earn an income doing the vaccination. So far there are six teams covering a total of eleven villages. They are now carrying out the vaccination entirely independently.

A non-veterinary project Andy is involved in is the promotion of safe drinking water by using the sun to purify the water, and using waste plastic and glass bottles, a highly effective and free means of obtaining clean water. Andy trains groups of women, usually the mother’s Union group in each church, how to pass the technology on to their neighbours and then helps them with training seminars until they are able to do the promotion work themselves.

Andy is involved in a range of other projects such as harvesting insects for food to improve access to protein in village diets, particularly for children and AIDS sufferers, farming bats and snails (you’ll have to ask him about that one!), renovating cattle dip tanks, among others, as well as advising the diocese on their livestock projects.

Tags: iringa tanzania "mission partner" vet livestock health teacher disabilities adults veterinary medicine" crafts textiles teach teaching
Last updated: 06/02/2008 17:26