World Vision Child Sponsorship is both a personal and practical way to show that you care. It also allows you to see a whole new world through the eyes of a child. To know that you care and are willing to help means so much to a child in need. And you can send personal letters to your child and even small gifts.
About Janeth
Gender: Female
Birthdate: 18 December 2000
School: Not in school yet
Pastime: Dolls
Language: Nyamwezi
Janeth's mum and dad are both well and work as subsistence farmers. Janeth is too young to work. Janeth is from Tanzania.Tanzania was formed in 1964, from the union of mainland Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar. It is the largest of the East African nations.
Geography
The mainland has four distinct climatic zones: hot, humid tropical coastal plains; the arid central plateau; high, moist and humid lake regions; and the temperate highlands. Mt Kilimanjaro (5,895 m), Africa’s highest mountain, rises from the central plateau. Tanzania has an abundance of lakes and waterways, including Lake Tanganyika (the second deepest lake in the world) and Lake Victoria (Africa’s largest lake). There are two rainy seasons March to May and October to December.
Education
Free primary education lasts for seven years, theoretically between the ages of seven and 13 years (standards one to seven). However many children enroll well after their seventh birthday, so it is common to find overage children still in primary school, especially in rural areas. A growing shortage of teachers, partially caused by deaths from AIDS, means class sizes are typically well above the Ministry of Education’s target of one teacher per 45 students. Classrooms, desks and books are also in short supply.
Although almost two thirds of Tanzanian households are within two kilometres of a primary school, in rural areas a quarter are 20 kilometres or more from a secondary school. Travel distances, school expenses and poor academic results mean that many children leave school and go to work after the national examination in standard seven.
Health
There are six levels of health care in Tanzania, from village health posts that provide basic preventive services, through to dispensaries and health centres, and district, regional and referral hospitals. Even in rural areas, over 90 percent are within 10 kilometres of a dispensary or health centre.
However, if access is not such a problem, then waiting times, lack of drugs and high costs are. Approximately one in six Tanzanian children die before their fifth birthday. Inadequate immunisation, drug shortages, poor nutrition and unsafe drinking water make children vulnerable to diseases such as measles, dysentery, cholera and tuberculosis.
Malaria remains one of the nation’s biggest killers, however HIV/AIDS has spread rapidly, leaving a trail of widows and orphans in its wake. Among the poor, who cannot afford extra health care or absorb income losses, the effects of the disease are even greater.
Economy
Tanzania heavily depends on agriculture, which provides approximately 85 percent of exports and employs most of the country’s workforce. Agricultural processing, light industry, mining, service industries and tourism are the other main employers.The country ’s rising rate of HIV infections poses serious problems for its future economic growth. The World Bank estimates Tanzania’s GDP could be 15-20 percent lower by 2015 because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, compared to a situation without HIV/AIDS.
Agriculture
Women do most of the agricultural work. Most farmers still use traditional farming methods (only 11 percent of rural households own a plough and 0.2 percent a tractor), and land holdings are small (3 hectares or less). Limited technology, unsustainable farming methods, dependence on rain for irrigation and the labour loss caused by AIDS-related illness and death all contribute to reduced productivity.
Water
In rural areas, where most people live, approximately 53 percent of the population depends on unprotected water sources such as lakes, rivers, ponds, springs and open wells. Rural families also have to travel long distances to access water less than half of them live within one kilometre of their nearest water source. GO, do it, sponsor a child today!