School Orchards Africa Society

School Orchards Africa Society provides funds to purchase fruit tree seedlings for the children of schools in rural areas of Tanzania to plant orchards at their schools. To date the children have planted orchards at 11 different schools with approximately 200 fruit trees in each school. The orchards are flourishing and being cared for by the children - a new life skill. With each orchard we provided funds for a 3000 litre citern to catch rain water from the school roofs to get the orchards started. School Orchards Africa Society is now upgrading the water supply with the help of Rotary International building 100 000 litre inground concrete cisterns which are filled with rain water from the roofs of the schools during the rainy seasons. This water will last through the dry season to support the orchards as well provide safe water for the domestic use at the school for the teachers and children. As the children are responsible for fetching water for the school and the households of the teachers it becomes an enormous task during the dry seas. Children walk may kilometers to bring water that is from an unclean source losing time in class and often getting sick form water-born parasites. These cisterns have a positive effect on the whole community in these small rural villages. The original plan for School Orchards Africa Society was to provide funds to plant fruit orchards in schools to provide fruit for the children to eat. Now some of the schools have excess fruit and are able to sell some fruit to get money for school supplies. We are now going back to the schools and improving the water supply for the orchards and domestic use of the children teachers as well as the rest of the community.