Charity marks 40 years of support for Tanzania

FORTY years ago a group of like-minded people in Carmarthen forged a link between this corner of West Wales and a community in Tanzania, Africa, which has gone from strength to strength.

- IAN LEWIS

The aim was to help alleviate poverty in a town called Mondul, focusing on the local hospital, primary school and other projects.

Monduli is a small town in the Arusha region of North East Tanzania near the Kenyan border and Mount Kilimanjaro. The area consists of plains, rainforest and mountains.

The dedicated charity called Cwlwm Monduli was formed after Cllr Peter Hughes Griffiths organised a meeting to discuss the feasibility of twinning Carmarthen with an African country.

At the meeting was David James, who worked at Barclays bank in Carmarthen and had recently returned from a Young Farmers Scholarship to Tanzania. He had married a local woman from the country and suggested Monduli should be approached.

Cllr Hughes Griffiths, a founding member of the charity, said: "At the time, Carmarthen's deputy mayor Malcolm Jones was keen to do something, so I organised a meeting - that's how it all started. At the start we were sending second-hand items such as equipment from Glangwili Hospital and correspondence was slow between us and Monduli because we had to write letters, there was no internet or email."

Trustee Jill Evans, who joined shortly after the charity was launched, said: "The first projects supported were the women's textile group run as a means whereby the women could help their families out of poverty by making women's and children's clothes. We also helped the school and Monduli Hospital.