The International Day of the Girl Child

For the honor of the Wednesday's special day, we can announce that the total number of the girls in our Wasiliana-group has already grown over 60! This means, that now over 60 girls have an opportunity to speak out loud and to learn how to communicate and protect their rights. They also have a safe space to share their ideas and worries with others.

We had the great number of girls participating on Wednesday.

On Wednesday 11th of October, we celebrated the International Day of the Girl Child with Wasiliana-group, two mothers of the girls, and with two special guests. Last Saturday, the girls had wished to discuss about women's leader opportunities on this special day, so we arranged two ladys to come and share with us about the current literature project they are helping with about Women leaders of Africa.

In the beginning of the session, we discussed together about leadership in society and at home. The girls were very familiar with current leaders, both male and female, in Tanzania and in Mwanza's society. The discussion also leaded us to share some things about gender roles at home. Most of the girls described quite stereotypical gender roles between family members, but we were delighted that two girls also shared a little bit different models of how their household duties have been shared between father, mother and children.

After the introduction of the topic and our guests,  we were shared with two stories of the Woman leader's in Africa. Our guests told us about Liberian peace activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee, who, together with Liberian women's peace movement, helped bring an end to the Second Civil War in Liberia in 2003. Also, they told us about Queen Nanny of the Maroon, political leader of Jamaica, originally born in Ghana, who's action contributed the escape of almost 1000 slaves over her lifetime in Jamaica.

In the end of the session!

The girls had focused well on the topic through whole session, and participated actively with sharing their thoughts and questions. They were also excited about our guests and the topic, and there were as many as 35 girls participating our session today. It was great to see, how bravely the girls nowadays introduce themself and talk in front of everyone, when in the beginning of the year, when the group started its activities, they were barely able to speak out loud. We really admire the courage of our clever, sweet and caring girls!

Anni Pihlaja

The writer is Master’s degree social work student from University of Tampere in Finland and is currently doing her internship with Ni Hekima Pekee. 

The Success Story of Charles's Family

(We have changed the names of the family members for protecting their privacy. A permission for publishing the story and photos has been asked from the family.)

The  children of the family with their new bricks for building extra room
for their house.

When NIHEP met Charles’s family for the first time, it was February 2013. We found the oldest daughter of the family, Mageni (22 y.), at home with her seven younger siblings. The parents weren’t anywhere around. They told that their father had been in the hospital several days and was very sick, when the mother was working all day in the hotel like in every other day of the week. Her salary though was so small, 1500 tzs per day (0,60 euro), that it wasn’t sufficient to live up the whole family. With more interviewing it appeared that none of the kids were attending the school, because they were lacking school equipment and some of them had never even started to attend. Their clothes were dirty and torn, and their house was so small that some of the children were sleeping in the neighbor’s house. The oldest children were usually eating only once in a day because of the lack of food and sometimes even younger ones hadn’t got their breakfast daily. The family lacked money for the treatment of their father and had started to think about selling their house because of that. Their relatives weren’t able to help them anyhow because of their own challenges.

NIHEP started the active working with the family right away. NIHEP advised them to contact the ward officers with chairman of the street, so that they could help them to get free treatment for their father in the hospital. In the same time, NIHEP helped the children go back to school by providing them the school materials. All of them wished to continue their studies and also the parent wished them to go back to school. Finally father got little bit better too and was able to return home.

When NIHEP had helped the family with that current, alarming situation, we began to discuss with the mother about how could she make more money for the family, when father was still too old and sick to do so. Mrs. Charles wanted to have her own little business, and after careful planning and with NIHEP’s economic support she was eventually able to do so. In August 2014, Mrs. Charles established her own little cafeteria with her oldest daughter Mageni. This was a great success for Mrs. Charles, who was used to live with her husband’s earnings and take care of the children at home, at the same time thinking that she wouldn’t be able to do anything else but that.

Soon after that, in the same year, Mr. Charles passed away and Mageni gave the birth for her first baby at home. She was not together with the father of the baby. Still, the family had managed to get over the worst part of their problems and cafeteria business had started to go well. The children were able to attend at school and family was getting more food than before. However, NIHEP provided three mattresses to the family to give them more suitable sleeping conditions at home, because even if they had their own business now, they didn’t had enough money to make more expensive investments. We continued to do regular follow-ups to the family to make sure that they are still doing well, and we also assisted them the one more time in 2016 by providing new school supplies to the children.

In September 2017, family’s situation is still stable. Mageni’s daughter is three years old now and has grown up as she should have been. The younger children are still going to school, and two of the older brothers has already moved away from the home and are making their own living.  The other older sons (15 and 20 years old), who have already finished with their studying, have jobs and are bringing money for the family. A little by little, Mrs. Charles has bought the bricks for building an extra rooms for their current house. Now, they have almost enough of those to start an operation. Also, now they have enough money for proper food and children’s school supplies. Mageni is not worried about family’s situation anymore and thinks that they are doing quite okay in their life.

Lion’s club has supported the family for four years, and that has made a big difference for the family’s situation. Without the financial backing from them, the family would not be doing as well as it is nowadays. We want to thank Lion's Club, and also Mwembe, for coordinating the support to us.