A Story about The Value of Supporting the Christmas Bowl Appeal
Rev. Brian Polkinghorne
Brian shared this story in Melbourne at the 2024 Launch of the Christmas Bowl, which is now in its 75th year.
I was a Congregational minister in South Australia, with a degree in agriculture when in 1970, my wife Jill and I were accepted as Fraternal workers with the Australian Council of Churches (ACC) through the support given to the Christmas Bowl Appeal. There was a vacancy with the YMCA Farm School in Tanzania and so with our three very small children, we headed off to Tanzania, not knowing a single person in the fascinating continent of Africa.
Once there I found a little old 100 egg kerosene operated incubator, got it working, employed a young man to make more incubators and that was the start of very successful poultry industry. After four years with the YMCA, I was invited to initiate an Agricultural Production and Training School with the Roman Catholic church at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The Catholics weren’t part of ACC in those times, but ACC through the Christmas Bowl Appeal, agreed to continue supporting us. That was 1974 – 50 years ago!
In this 500 acre bush block we soon got things humming along. We soon established a thriving production farm with almost every sort of crop and animal production and demonstration units you could think of. When President Julius Nyerere heard about us he came to visit. What a day. He lit the fourth 1,100 egg kerosene incubator and asked me to produce 1 million chickens a year for Tanzania! When I recovered from the shock and raised a slight objection, he offered to bring us electricity free of charge to enable this to happen. It happened.
Writing up the project on a little aerogramme I raised the funding for a modern hatchery, incubators from India, laying and processing sheds. Donors from Germany came and offered more money than I had requested. That’s the way it was in those heady Development days. We started with the aim of 500,000 chickens per year because of potential disease and learning problems which could arise. Later, to initiate the training facility, I obtained finances from Canada to build a training and accommodation facility for 60 local students.
In 1977, with much heartache, we had to return to Australia. However, if today you went to the Kilacha Production and Training Centre, this is what you might see. Instead of a capacity for half a million chickens a year – their capacity has increased to a million a year! Instead of training facilities for 60 students they now have 700 students! No more Europeans on site from 3 years after we left! No more overseas Aid required for the last 40 years – they are totally self-reliant! Their employment tally is enormous. The whole story is very complex but very humbling and highly successful.
The local Catholic church in Tanzania understood that if you lay down solid ethical and developmental foundations, despite all the hiccups that can happen over 50 years and you keep training local people, serving with compassion, and keeping corruption under control, effective inclusive development can occur, and ‘from little things, big things grow.’
In 1990 I was requested, or shall I say arm-twisted to initiate a big reforestation project
in Tanzania. After five years I handed over the project to the local staff I had trained and
together with Australian Aid through a local para-church organisation we managed to get well over 2,000 people involved in planting and caring for 6.27 million trees. That success enabled us to start another Training farm with the African Inland Church, and so we spent a total of 26 years in several Regions of Tanzania.
Thank you to the Christmas Bowl for enabling us to fall in love with Tanzania and serve God and God’s people in so many ways. During all those years, Jill was positively involved in a variety of teaching positions, ranging from pre-school education in English medium and International schools, teacher training, English teacher in Bible Schools, and serving on the Board of a Street Children’s project.
In 2018 as a volunteer with the Anglicans in Tanzania, the Bishop asked me to train a young man in planting and caring for trees. I did that with both theoretical and practical training before returning to Australia 6 months later. Three and a half years later that young man wrote to me and said – “Brian, I think that you and I and God got things just right. I have just overseen the planting of our first million trees!”
Thanks be to God and thanks to Christmas Bowl for enabling us to get started, and following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, ministering in the trusted tradition of serving God’s people in Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
Keep this great tradition going. Give generously to the Bowl this Christmas