In January, Teach A Man To Fish launched its Loan Programme 2009, inviting our network members to tell us about new income-generating initiatives that they wish to set up or existing initiatives which they are looking to expand, for which they required financial assistance. All loan applications are now in and we have received a large number of entries from all around the world! Most of our entries were from different countries all over Africa, though we also received entries from South Asia and Latin America too. We have been very impressed with the generally high standard of entries and we only wish that we had the funds to provide loans to more applicants!

There were some great ideas for income-generating projects, from bee-keeping to sell honey and poultry-rearing to sell eggs and meat to cyber-cafes and battery-recycling initiatives, all of which aimed to increase the financial self-sufficiency of the educational programme by directing profits back into the project, to ensure its sustainability over time. Whilst unfortunately there can be only a few successful applicants, we were pleased to discover that there are many organisations, spread across many continents, that are already doing great things in the field of self-sufficient schools, and continue to strive to work towards the ‘Education that pays for itself’ model that Teach A Man To Fish promotes. We wish all of our network members’ success in their future project endeavours!