Friends of Tafo is a UK Charity that facilitates and inspires sustainable development in education, health, employment and infrastructure in the town of Kwahu-Tafo, Ghana, West Africa.

This is the seventh FOT Newsletter, which we hope will show you the exciting progress your help has enabled Kwahu-Tafo to make and tell you of our next plans.

Local and international donations, including a massive gift from the Prince's Trust IBLF, have achieved startling progress at the Senior Secondary School, where 40 computers (below left) now enable daily classes for the students. "I can't believe I have this chance in my own town!" one pupil told us.

Public classes are now also under way, and the next funding challenge is the spread of IT, with UNESCO's support, to all our Junior Secondary Schools.

The last six months

British and Foreign School Society donated text books to the Senior Secondary School (left).

Building has started on a computer room at the Methodist JSS (left) funded by Samuel Whitbread Community College in Bedford

Kwahu-Tafo's first science equipment has arrived (left), thanks to LabAid, and will establish a Science Lab in one of the new classrooms (below left) greatly assisted by Ghana International Foundation. The photo shows Project Director Joe Ofori with visiting scientist and teacher trainer Graham Dingley, who held a series of educational workshops in March

A generous personal donation has enabled four disabled children (including Isaac Kofi Nyarko, left) to have the operations they need to improve their mobility.

The next six months

Skills: Most families in Tafo have no income at all. FOT is looking for funding to create a Business Development Fund, to step up training programmes and include start-up loans to those who graduate from our skills workshops in glass beads, cane furniture, tie and dye (right), batik, soap, beekeeping and leatherwork. We also have plans for an ambitious leather sandal-making programme, principally for the disabled, if we can find the funding.

Twinning: We continue to look for more schools who want to twin with Tafo schools, and we have details available for any UK schools interested - please contact us!

Teachers: The Development Council is campaigning for Government recognition of the rescued SSS, whose enrolment, with your help, has leapt from 10 to 140. Until that happens, FOT has to find £4,000 a term for the teachers' salaries - a tough call.

Wells: We have (largely thanks to Douglas Turner Trust) refurbished five wells (left). We need funding to refurbish as least 3 more, and we need to provide covers for all of them to solve the occasional but potentially fatal problem of children falling in.

Sport boosts the community but is currently not resourced at all. Every school pleads for sports clothes, boots and real equipment. Meanwhile they make do (left).

What you can do:

Giving to FOT puts you directly in touch with a community where we make sure you see speedy effective results.

Donations: join our list of generous friends! Donations by cheque, standing order or internet: www.givenow.org and www.cafonline.org. We can transport unwanted educational books and toys to Tafo, where they will be appreciated beyond words.

Major thanks for recent donations go to: IBLF, Standard Chartered Bank, BFSS, Ghana International Foundation, Good Gifts, ie:music, the A.G.Leventis Foundation, Lab Aid and all of you who have so enthusiastically given donations and attended our fundraising events!

Recent Events: Fund-rising parties are easy to lay on and very popular, and we are always happy to be there to tell people about Tafo - as we did at Art First Gallery in London, Albury Park, Gorgeous and a generous donor's 50th Birthday.. thanks for coming along!

Thanks from the Big Chief!