Students plan Tanzania trip

A group of IU students and Bloomington residents are preparing for a trip to help renovate a school in Tanzania this summer.

The group, led by senior Lauren Wright, will be traveling in collaboration with Childreach International, an organization that works to increase children’s access to health care and education worldwide.

The organization sends groups of volunteers from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to Africa to help renovate or build schools, said Amanda Leibovitz, the fundraising director at Childreach International.

It also raises money by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world.

The Bloomington team will be traveling to one of six different communities in Tanzania and assisting with the community’s specific needs.

“Each site is individual,” Leibovitz said. “One community and school may really need toilets, and at another place the buildings may be crumbling.”

While the group works on the construction, they will stay at a campsite near the school. On the weekends the group will stay in a hotel in Moshi.

“During the week we don’t really have access to showers and toilets and things like that as much as we are used to here,” Wright said. “But then on the weekends, we will have a hotel with outlets and showers.”

The team will collect money individually for the trip from now until the deadline in April. The volunteers must raise $3,750 each in order to participate.

Half the money will go toward the volunteers’ flights, food and other essentials, and the other half will be donated to help the children of the community they go to.

Raising the money to go on the trip is something that makes freshman volunteer Lara Head nervous.

She went to one of the early information sessions and has not tried to raise any money so far.

However, Head said she has the support and aid of her friends.

“I have a friend who is in the music scene in St. Louis, and he is going to help do a benefit concert for it,” Head said.

Even though members have to do their own fundraising, their team leader is there to help with ideas and following through with plans.

Wright said the options to collect donations are endless, and there are strategies from writing letters to receive sponsorships to wearing goofy clothes to classes.

Besides the initial fundraising, Wright and Head are looking forward to the trip. Both of the students said they were hoping this trip would expand their view of the world as well as help the children of Tanzania.

“This is a great opportunity not only for the volunteers to benefit themselves, but to help other people,” Wright said. “This is such a great experience because you get to help people, and you don’t have to pay for anything. It’s all fundraising.”