Care for Africa was founded in 2006 by Diana Butler OAM. Twenty years on she still travels to Tarime, still sits down with the women’s groups, the head teachers and the district health officers, and still asks the same question before anything gets built: what do you actually need?
Care for Africa began in the emergency department of the Launceston General Hospital, where Diana Butler and her fellow nurses heard stories of Tarime from a young doctor who had trained there.
Those stories stayed with her, and in 2006 Diana helped organise a shipping container of medical aid bound for Tarime, travelling with it herself to see it delivered. It was there, accompanying that container into the communities of Tarime, that Diana witnessed first hand the daily struggle for clean water, basic healthcare, and education, and Care for Africa was born.
Twenty years on, that founding journey has grown into an established, trusted presence across nine communities in the Tarime District, spanning water, health, education, and women’s enterprise.
Real change has never come from what we do for people. It comes from what we do with them.
Every bore goes where the community says it should go. Every women’s centre is run by the women themselves. Every school we finish is handed to the Tanzanian government rather than held onto. The work is designed to continue long after we have gone, because a program that depends on us is not a program, it is a dependency.
That approach is slower. It also means that twenty years later the bores are still running, the centres are still trading and the schools are still teaching.
Working alongside our Tanzanian Country Manager Abdallah Obedi and his team, this is what two decades has built.
Ghati was ten when Diana first met her at a rural school clinic in 2011, unable to walk without pain. Fifteen years later she has finished her schooling, completed three years of training in design, sewing and cloth technology at Tarime Folk Development College, and earned an A grade in every module. She is now a qualified tailor.
Raphael has new callipers and crutches and is walking upright for the first time. He is about to begin his final two years of school at a specialist government school near Dar es Salaam, twenty four hours by bus from home. He wants to be an English teacher.
Diana’s contributions have been widely recognised. In 2012, she received the Tasmanian Telstra Business Women’s Community and Government Award and was named a national finalist, later serving as a judge for these awards. In 2016, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her humanitarian work in Tanzania. She is also a Paul Harris Fellow of The Rotary Foundation, the recipient of the 2021 University of Tasmania International Alumni Award, and an inaugural inductee into the Tasmanian Nurses Honour Roll.
Between trips, Diana works as an After Hours Nurse Manager at Launceston General Hospital.
Diana joined Bianca Welsh on the From Experience podcast for the most personal conversation she has shared publicly.
“I am committed to creating lasting change and leaving behind a legacy to ensure a life free of poverty for all.”
