Author Lisa Grainger spent three months travelling through Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa and Botswana, collecting stories that have been passed down by generations of gogos, or grandmothers. The result, Stories Gogo Told Me (Penguin, 2008), is a collection of 40 traditional African tales that Lisa gathered from village storytellers, farmers, and rural teachers. On her journey, she met some of the girls Camfed is supporting through school.

“Having taken the stories from villages, it didn’t feel right to profit myself, so I decided to donate proceeds from the book to Camfed,” explains Lisa, who grew up in Zimbabwe. “Camfed’s work appealed to me because I had seen firsthand how much money went directly to educating girls in Africa.”

Lisa visited a rural school in Zimbabwe and met 56 girls whose education is being funded by Camfed. She also met two young women who, with Camfed’s support, are studying social sciences at university in order to help their own communities. Every one of them said that without Camfed, they would not have been educated. “None of these girls had ever seen a book of traditional African stories, and they all begged me for a copy,” says Lisa. “I know that there are hundreds more girls across Africa who will benefit if the book sells.”

Camfed would like to thank Lisa enormously for her generosity, and to urge supporters to buy this wonderful and evocative book.

Stories Gogo Told Me is available at WHSmith.

Listen to an interview with Lisa Grainger on BBC Radio 4

Sixteen finalists have been chosen from the 400 journalists who entered the Guardian newspaper’s Development Journalism Competition.

Two of these finalists will now get the chance to visit Camfed’s work in Zambia and Tanzania. Their names will be announced on August 1st, and their articles will appear in the Guardian in November 2008.

Camfed is one of eight charities collaborating with the Guardian in this ground-breaking competition, which challenges amateur and freelance journalists to look behind the headlines and investigate why 2.7 billion people around the world are still living in poverty. (more…)

by Vicky Anning, Writer-in-Residence

A team of 16 runners braved wind and rain to take part in the British 10K London Run on Sunday, July 6 for Camfed. So far the intrepid team has raised more than £11,000 for girls in Africa, which is enough to buy 1,466 pairs of school shoes.

A pair of sturdy school shoes costs just £7.50, but this is beyond the reach of many families in the rural areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania where Camfed works. This can effectively deny girls the chance of an education – because shoes are a requirement for children to go to school. (more…)

Leading Camfed alumna Fiona Muchembere features in a thought-provoking interview about social entrepreneurship with BBC World Service presenter Peter Day.

Interviewed at the 2008 Skoll World Forum at Oxford University, Fiona talks about the power of education to transform lives and strengthen communities. With the support of Camfed, which was founded by social entrepreneur Ann Cotton in 1993, Fiona was the first girl in her rural community in Zimbabwe to attend university. After graduating as a lawyer, Fiona is now in a position to support 22 members of her family through school. (more…)

Camfed is still looking for a few more people to pull on their running shoes to raise money for desperately-needed school shoes for girls in Africa.

The British 10K London Run has sold out for the past three years, but Camfed has a handful of places left for the July 6 event. It’s a fantastic opportunity to join tens of thousands of other runners as they race through the heart of London, past landmarks like St Paul’s Cathedral andBuckingham Palace.

Over the past two years, runners have helped to raise more than £17,000 for Camfed by taking part in the run – which means Camfed has been able to buy shoes for 2,266 girls in sub-Saharan Africa who would otherwise not be able to go to school.

A pair of sturdy school shoes costs just £7.50, but this is beyond the reach of many families in the rural areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana andTanzania where Camfed works. This can effectively deny girls the chance of an education – because shoes are a requirement for children to go to school. Not only this, but making the long journey to school in bare feet is painful on the often scorching earth – and without protection, it’s not uncommon to pick up debilitating diseases such as hookworm along the way. A decent pair of shoes can make such a big difference in the lives of African girls living in rural poverty.

To join the Camfed team, send us an email, phone 01223 362648 before Friday, June 27. Or visit our 10km race page to find out more.

(delivered at the launch event for the Financial Times 2007 seasonal appeal)

At the age of 13, when I had just completed my first year of secondary school education, my father lost his job as a general hand at a meat processing plant in the capital of Zimbabwe, Harare. Every year from that point on, my family and I struggled to scrape together enough money to ensure that I could stay in school. My parents were barely able to raise the $42 in annual school fees for my second year of secondary school, so I had to work to pay for notebooks, pens and other school materials. On weekends, I woke up at 4:30 am to travel from village to village selling vegetables. I would get back home around 9:00 am, and then go to the local market to continue selling vegetables for up to eight hours a day. Despite all this effort, I only earned the equivalent of 30 cents a day. (more…)