Vet Books for Africa

Dear loyal supporters of VETBOOKS!

Coming to the end of our term, where we finally head off into Mother Africa where all our planning is coming together to create “the positive ripple effect in the struggling world of conservation”, we would like to say A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed either their time or financially to support this remarkable initiative. 

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Since the start of our GlobalGiving project launch we have raised $4 359, which has contributed immensely to the change we hope to make in our sister African countries. Even though we have not reached our mark, the assistance has been an additional bonus that we could not be more thankful for.

Itinerary

Due to the current situation and the new university calendars, we plan to leave on 29 December 2020 from the University of Pretoria, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Onderstepoort in Pretoria, South Africa. We will be travelling for 5 weeks and return at the beginning of February.

We will be travelling to 4 universities, starting with Zimbabwe. We will continue north into Zambia, where we will visit the Veterinary faculty in Lusaka and then east to Malawi. After the university in Lilongwe, Malawi, we will travel into Tanzania where we will visit our final university.

On our route back home we will stop at various charities to deliver specific supplies that we collected on their behalf. We will drive from Tanzania through Zambia, Zimbabwe and back into South Africa.

We will be packing all our equipment and the supplies over the next few weeks, while making the final preparations before our departure.

Changes 

As a result of the Covid regualtions, we had to make a few alterations to our plans. As one can imagine to keep people and countries as a whole safe, certain laws were implemented which unfortunately made our lives a bit more difficult. Each border crossing requires a negative Covid 19 test (only viable for 2 days), accumulating to around an additional $ 4000 for the 8 committee members and 7 borders. Something we definitely did not budget for. 

To compensate for this unwelcome surprise, we had to make the difficult decision to shorten our trip by one week and leave out the two most northern countries – Kenya and Uganda – in order to save time and redirect funds.

This was an extremely difficult decision as the Ugandan univeristy is one of the univeristies we identified as needing our help the most. We do however have a plan in place to still assist these two faculties, please keep an eye on our social media for more information. Even with the shortened version of the trip, we are confident that we can still make the impact we aim to with the resources and circumstances we have been given. We have been planning this for nearly two years and even in this uncertain time, we know we have prepared adequately to still make this a huge success – especially with the support we have received from our donors and partners.

We still have some preparations lying ahead, but once we are on the road with all the books and equipment packed we know our efforts would have all been worth it.

We will keep our project supporters up to date with our progress so please follow us on instagram: @vetbooksforafrica

or facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VetBooksForAfrica

There is still a month before the trip and any donations are more than welcome. If you know of anyone that has textbooks, equipment or medical material that they are not using and would be willing to donate, kindly let us know on info@vetbooksforafrica.org.

Please also consider sharing our project link on social media and telling your friends and family about our project - or just bring us up in conversation. Help us spread the word about our work and continue to grow our community of supporters like you.

Thank you again for choosing this unique initiative. We love our animals. We love our people. We love our continent. We believe we have the ability to connect them with the vital component “education is the key to conservation”. #OneHealth #OneAfrica

Yours in Conservation through Education,

 
The Vet Books for Africa.