Chris' Transition

I have been spending as much time as I could in Tanzania for almost fifteen years. As soon as I could – about a week after I graduated college – I moved to Tanzania to live full time. I have loved every day in Tanzania. But after almost six years, I have decided to relocate to Tulsa, OK.

 To truly appreciate how difficult a decision this has been for me, you would have to know what it’s like to wake up to the sun cresting Lake Victoria or listen to the JBFC residential girls sing as the moon rises. I have lived and breathed this place for most of my adult life. JBFC and Tanzania is my home, but I made this decision for the future of this organization and all of the lives we’re helping change.

JBFC is an ever-expanding organization. We currently provide refuge to 46 abused and abandoned girls and education to more than 300 students, serve over 200,000 meals to our students, staff, and residential girls every year. We employ more than 70 local Tanzanian staff at our school and on our farm, and provide quality healthcare for our immediate community. With Joseph and Mary School producing its first class of secondary school graduates, our organization is set to welcome new residential girls in Kitongo. We’re slated to break ground for our first building on our new second campus, which will mean as many as 10 new girls on that campus as well.

JBFC is growing rapidly, and so do our needs. JBFC’s reach and impact continue to grow and that means we need more resources to help more children and communities. To keep pace with our expansion in Tanzania, we need to step up our efforts to recruit more people who believe in this mission. By relocating to our headquarters in Tulsa, OK, I hope to increase our fundraising efforts and our presence in support communities throughout the U.S.

While I can understand why some of you might have concerns about this decision, I would like to assure you that our team on the ground in Tanzania is more than up to the challenge. I am extremely confident in our staff and management team in Tanzania. They have a very capable leader in Seth Diemond, the in-country Chief of Operations, who oversees all of our Tanzanian operations and programs, and Melinda Wulf, the Administrative Director in Tanzania, who manages our finances and human relations. They are backed up by our dedicated and hard-working local management team, who are the true backbone of our work in Tanzania.  This team will continue to run the day-to-day operations in Tanzania, as they have been doing for the past couple of years.

I will continue to take trips back to Tanzania several times a year to keep tabs on our development. And I will most certainly miss seeing our girls, students, and staff daily. But they are the reason I am taking on this new challenge. I have such a deep love for Tanzania and its people and I’m dedicated to making sure we can support the kind of change we’d like to see for the country’s most vulnerable.

My four boys decided to tackle this new adventure with me. Saleh, Jonas, Danny, and Paul are attending Holland Hall School in Tulsa, OK and are already busy at their new school and adjusting to their new environment (the cold weather is proving to be a particular challenge).

Thank you to everyone who has shown me and my family such kindness and support through this transition. I truly believe this move will enable me to lead JBFC’s continual expansion, allowing our organization to continue helping children and communities and alleviating extreme rural poverty!

Blogger Chris Gates is JBFC's Founder & CEO.

The Year Ahead: 2016

Happy new year to all of our wonderful family, friends, and supporters around the world!

2016 promises to be a big year full of changes for JBFC. It marks JBFC’s 10th Anniversary. 10 years ago, JBFC was a small four-acre campus with just one building and seven girls. Today, JBFC’s first campus has grown to more than 70 acres and is home to 46 girls with 17 permanent buildings. Each and every one of you have fueled this tremendous growth over the past ten years. To commemorate our 10th birthday we will have a series of special events, so be on the lookout for more details soon.  As I look back on the last decade, I am so humbled by the thousands of supporters who have made this mission a reality. This year, we want to show you exactly what ten years of your heartfelt generosity has meant to hundreds of children and families.

We ended last year with a major milestone, JBFC’s first graduation of secondary school students. Among the twenty-eight Joseph and Mary School students who graduated in December, eight of the new graduates are JBFC residential girls. We’re beginning 2016 with another major milestone, those eight young women are leaving the nest. They are moving off of JBFC’s campus and into a transition house in the nearby city of Mwanza and attending a “short course.” This three-month course will give the girls the opportunity to continue to improve their English and learn new computer skills. In the fall, they will transition into more permanent programs – be it university, college or trade schools. We are extremely proud of these girls and all of the recent Joseph and Mary graduates and look forward to supporting them and their very bright futures!

As our older girls are moving out, soon we will have more girls moving in. JBFC hopes to expand our impact on vulnerable girls this year, by not only adding girls on our Kitongo campus, but also adding our first group of girls on our second campus.  We are planning to accept as many as eight new residential girls in the coming year. We will also begin our post-secondary training course in tourism at Papa’s restaurant. 

At the second campus, we will soon break ground on our first, multi-purpose building. With the construction of this new building, we plan to have our first ten girls on the second campus by the end of the year. With your support, we hope to grow the amount of girls we’re able to help from 46 to more than 60 by the end of the year.

As JBFC has matured as an organization, the challenges of running this organization have also changed. We have an amazing team on the ground in Tanzania. The management team, under the guidance and direction of our Chief Operating Officer in Tanzania, Seth Diemond, will continue to run the day-to-day operations. But my role as C.E.O. will be shifting to spend more time on securing resources so our organization can continue to grow. And to fulfill that role, I have relocated to Tulsa, OK. The move that has weighed heavily on my mind for the past year, but I am confident in our Tanzania team and truly believe this is what is needed to secure JBFC’s next ten years is as fruitful as its first decade.

But as many things are changing, the heart of what we do – ending poverty for hundreds of children and families – is still the same. We’re hoping to continue to spread our mission and our message to even more people in 2016. We anticipate welcoming many new faces,  including volunteers from Lawrenceville in New Jersey and Women Empowering Nations (hailing from Oklahoma and Texas). We will also welcome back students from Sarah Lawrence College, Cornell, Duke, Deerfield Academy, Steamboat Mountain School, Holland Hall, Bronxville, and Brunswick. With so many wonderful partnerships, we would like to suggest that people apply early for volunteer positions, because slots are going fast.

2016 will be a big year. But we need YOU to help turn all of these big dreams into reality. You have helped us transform a community over the last decade. Children are healthier, better educated and better prepared for their futures. Parents are stronger, more informed and better able to care for their families. Each and every one of you has played a role in those transformations. You have been the catalyst for change in this community. The spark has been lit, but now is the time to fan the flames. Please continue to work with us to end poverty one child, one family, one community at a time.

In Memoriam: Ray Batchelor

The JBFC family is saddened as we mourn the loss of a man who was one of the first people to believe in this mission. My grandfather, Raymond Batchelor, passed away on Saturday, January 2nd.

“Papa,” as he was lovingly referred to by family and friends all over the world, worked his entire career in the oil and gas industry and was a very active supporter of many community organizations.

While many of you know the role that my beloved grandmother, Janada "Mimi" Batchelor, played in inspiring me to start JBFC. The truth of the matter is there would be no JBFC without Papa. He was one of the first supporters and driving forces behind the founding of this organization.

When I first decided that I was going to start a non-profit in 2005, I had just finished high school. I faced many obstacles and a lot of skepticism. I heard time and time again, that I was too young, too naïve, too far out of my depth. 

It was Papa who believed in me from the very beginning. He knew I was following the path that I was meant to be on, and his constant love and support of me and JBFC's mission to alleviate extreme rural poverty helped create the organization that impacting the lives of more than 400 children and families every day.

When we officially registered as a nonprofit in 2006, Papa helped fund the purchase of our first four acres of land in Kitongo. He helped secure the funds to begin construction of our first building. Because of his support, we were able to accept our first seven residential girls in 2007 and we have never looked back!

This is an extremely poignant time for Papa's passing, because this year marks our 10-year anniversary. It was 10 years ago that he believed in my vision, 10 years ago we purchased that first piece of land, and 10 years ago we began changing lives in rural Tanzania.

As we look back and reflect on our last ten years of work, I can’t help but be extremely humbled and grateful to the man who helped secure our first plot of land and supported us the entire way. I am so happy that Papa was able to see all of the amazing developments and changes with JBFC over the years and I know he was extremely proud of the work everyone does day in and day out at JBFC.

We will celebrate Ray "Papa" Batchelor's life and legacy on Monday, January 11th in Tulsa, OK. We will all be a little worse off now that Papa isn't in our lives. But we know his generosity and kind spirit will live on through all of the lives he has touched half a world away.

In lieu of flowers, the Batchelor Family would appreciate your contribution to JBFC's Ray Batchelor Memorial Fund, so his memory can do what he did in life, make the world a better place.