A CHRISTIAN woman who has spent the last two and a half years in Tanzania is back on a brief visit to South Zeal ? but says she will be returning to the country soon to open an orphanage for homeless children. Rebecca Jackson works through a ministry called Raw Mission, with Wendy Kelley, an American woman she met in Honduras and who shared an interest in working in Africa. Rebecca and Wendy work with children who have grown up on the streets of Tanzania, and currently have seven children under their care, living near the sprawling city of Arusha. Rebecca said: ?The youngest we have is eight years old up to 16 years old. In future we will be concentrating on taking younger children because when you start at a young age, that is when you can see the most dramatic change in a person.? Two of the youngsters were actually living on the street when the charity took them on, and those they have been able to help are just the tip of the iceberg, Rebecca says. ?There is a huge problem in Arusha with a growing number of street kids. Some are on the street because they have run away from home, some are there because their parents have died. Once a child has been on the street it is hard to get them back in a home setting. They have tasted what they think is freedom.? She said: ?One of the things they are really lacking is basic love. Tanzanian society doesn?t really show love to their children in the same way we do. We can change the outlook of a child just by giving them a feeling of love.? Rebecca said the young people Raw Mission worked with had experienced a hard start in life. One boy came to them as his mother was a drug addict and he had begun sniffing glue, another had been abandoned, others had lost their parents to HIV/Aids, she explained. Rebecca said: ?One of the boys, Good Luck, came from a very rural situation. He had never been in a moving vehicle, he had never had Coca-Cola. Everyday is like a new adventure for him. He had never received a present before, his eyes were just wide open when we gave him a present on his designated birthday.? Rebecca said Raw Mission, which receives financial backing from the Seeway Trust, a charity set up by Devon man George Bainborough, was definitely a long-term project. ?We are going to be there at least another 10-15 years. We have just got our organisation registered with the government,? said Rebecca, who said the move will enable the project to expand. Rebecca said the next phase of the project was very exciting. The charity is looking to purchase land to build an orphanage which could house up to 100 children. The youngsters will be divided into houses with about ten children per house, with a supportive family unit to help them. The charity currently employs three local members of staff who act as their house parents, which means at present, each child gets plenty of attention. The charity aims to get all the youngsters back in school, but they also receive extra lessons from Rebecca and the rest of the team. ?We teach them computing and English. Arusha is the main tourist centre in Tanzania, so for any hotel or office job, you are going to need to have English and computer skills,? she said. The children are also taught practical skills such as how to cook and do laundry, have the opportunity to gain vocational training and also learn about religion. ?I absolutely love living there. The conditions are tough, you only have electricity for 12 hours a day. It is not easy, but it is an adventure? said Rebecca. She said she found Arusha a very interesting place too: ?Even though it is a bustling town, it is still very third world.? Other benevolent work Raw Mission carries out involves going up the slopes of Mount Meru ? the fifth largest mountain in Africa ? providing goats and building goat sheds for the many mountain-dwelling widows who have young children to support. ?It is a business start up scheme of sorts,? Rebecca said, explaining that goats would provide a source of milk for the family, which could also be sold, while the goats could be bred ensuring more self-sustaining assistance. Rebecca has also been running a DVD bible school in Tanzania, using an American Christian educational film, which has been translated into Swahili. The school was well-received and students graduated earlier this year after completing 150 hours of learning. Rebecca said: ?The certificate diplomas come from America, which is exciting in itself for lots of the students. ?It was a six hour drive along a really dusty, bumpy track to get to the school, but it was fantastic, because they really wanted to learn.? While Rebecca is back in West Devon, Wendy is continuing to run another bible school for local people. The seeds of the idea of setting up a home for orphaned and homeless children came when Rebecca and Wendy first began working in Tanzania. Rebecca said: ?We were doing a weekly outreach, where we would hire a minibus and take about 30 or 40 street children out and play soccer with them, do some teaching and talk about health issues. ?We realised just doing this once a week wasn?t having much impact on them, it was just a day out to them. We had to get them off the street and give them a permanent place to live and a feeling of belonging.? Rebecca will be heading back to Arusha at the end of this month and says she hopes to have 14 children under the charity?s care by the end of the year, in preparation for an even larger expansion next year. She was unequivocal though about the beneficial nature of her work in Tanzania: ?We feel we can change somebody?s life. There is the freedom over there, to have a big project. We have seen in just a year how much the children have changed. Just by planting some different ideas and showing them it is possible to change their lives and their situation.? The project has received visits from members of the New Life Church in Okehampton, and Rebecca said she liked to keep those in England informed about the mission work that goes on in Africa. She thanked those who had made donations to the mission which had gone towards purchasing a tumble dryer for a local orphanage and sponsoring a child to go to school for a year. To find out more about the project contact Rebecca by e-mail at [email protected]">[email protected]