Summer 2017 InStitch

Introduction

The Honorable Sophia Mwakagenda is a Member of the Parliament of Tanzania. From 1 April 2016 to 20 March 2017 the Honorable Mwakagenda visited different constituencies of the Longido and Ngorongoro districts in the Arusha region, and the districts of Rungwe, Kyela, Mbarali, and Mbeya in the Mbeya region. This visit was a continuation of visits countrywide in order to listen to the people and implement some of her programs through her NGO She Can Foundation.

The visits in Mbeya and Arusha regions were coordinated by the Office of Members of Parliament located in Mbeya city.

Honorable Mwakagenda was accompanied by a team of 4 researchers and assistants: Edwin Mwaitebele, Emmanuel Ngwetta, Mpegwa Mwakang’ata, and Frank Kayumba.

The Purpose of the Visit

The purpose of the visit was to help women’s entrepreneur groups by giving them means of production, like sewing machines, to improve their productivity in their local settings.

Specific Objectives

• To meet women’s social and economic groups in different areas to hand over support and equipment including sewing machines
• To provide some knowledge and skills to these groups

Activities

The team met six women’s social and economic groups from seven constituencies of Arusha and Mbeya regions with the aim of sharing with them knowledge and skills on entrepreneurship for them to improve their work. The MPs handed over sewing machines during this visit. In Mbeya region and Arusha region, which is Masaai, the MPs handed over a total of 61 sewing machines.

The Honorable Mwakagenda gave four sewing machines to women’s entrepreneur groups in Mbeya urban constituencies.

In her visit of 17 and 18 March to the Longido district of Arusha region, MP Mwakagenda gave a sewing machine to a 21-year-old woman known as Grace from the Ngarenaibo village. The machine gives Grace employment and should improve her family’s economic situation.

Numbers of Sewing Machines Given

From 1 April 2016 to 23 March 2017, MP Mwakagenda gave 73 sewing machines as follows in Mbeya and Arusha regions.

REGION (District)	NUMBER OF MACHINES
MBEYA (Kyela, Rungwe, Mbarali, and Mbeya)	36
ARUSHA (Longido and Ngorongoro)	37
TOTAL	73

Other Activities

Honorable Sophia Mwakagenda had an opportunity to visit Ngorongoro Crater, which is an international tourist attraction in Ngorongoro district and talked with the leadership concerning their challenges in their day to day work.

Honorable Mwakagenda also visited her fellow MP Honorable Cecilia Pareso in Karatu district to console her on her brother’s death, which happened few days ago.

Reflections on the Visits

MP Mwakagenda and her team got a good reception from the leadership and citizenry in general.

The level of awareness of the people, particularly women, in attending, listening and participating to the Member of Parliament meetings was very high.

These visits give people hope: the visits show love and togetherness in society regardless of location, tribe, background, status, and colour.

Fall 2016 InStitch

Pedals for Progress has a new partner in Tanzania: the Tanzania Women and Youth Development Society (TWYDS). The foundation is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1994 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, West Africa. TWYDS has programs in education, health, business, agriculture, natural resources, and policy advocacy.

In June 2016, with the generous support of the Jack & Pauline Freeman Foundation, we shipped 74 sewing machines to TWYDS. They will offer training in the use and maintenance of the sewing machines and then distribute the machines to the people they’ve trained with the goal of improving their standard of living.

P4P picks partners based not only on their sewing machine or bicycle programs, but also on their other projects in their communities. Our partners often focus, for example, on education, business, or the environment. TWYDS has programs in all these areas. But from TWYDS we hear stories we do not hear from our other partners. TWYDS founder Sophia Mwakagenda has more than once been called on to rescue girls from underage marriages. These marriages are illegal in Tanzania but still occur because of tradition and because of the poverty of the girls’ parents. In April 2016 Sophia was approached by the mother of an 11-year-old Masai girl who, for 16 goats, had been sold into marriage to a 75-year-old man. With the help of the police, Sophia had the girl released from the arrangement and brought back to school. (The Sunflower Foundation of Australia has programs for the education of Tanzanian girls.)

We welcome the Tanzania Women and Youth Development Society as a new P4P partner. Good luck with the Sewing Peace project and all your other excellent work.

Dave and Gary packed 75 sewing machines into a cube, now bound for Tanzania.

[This description was written for the TWYDS. We will update it as we get more information from the She Can Foundation.]

INTRODUCTION

Tanzania Women and Youth Development Society (TWYDS) is a national non-governmental organization that facilitates the socio-economic, health, and situational development of marginalized women and young girls. TWYDS has been registered under Companies Act, 2002 registration number 128581, in the United Republic of Tanzania. The headquarters is located in Mbeya City in Southern Highland of Tanzania. TWYDS is working with women’s and girls’ issues countrywide. TWYDS’s main areas of work are social, economic and political empowerment, particularly in policy advocacy, community mobilization, awareness and sensitization on education and entrepreneurship training programs.

TWYDS is addressing critical issues that prevent completion of primary education for young Tanzanian girls and ensnare marginalized women in a poverty cycle. For Tanzanian girls, these issues include combating child marriages and protecting the girls, including working girls, to prevent child and adolescent pregnancies through general and reproductive health education. As a long-term response to reduce extreme poverty, TWYDS works further to empower Tanzania’s girls from harmful traditional and cultural practices which expose them to abuse and denial of continuous education.

For teen mothers and marginalized women, TWYDS offers support and entrepreneurship training as well as general life skills and social education which gives women means to survive and eventually improve their living standards.

Improving women’s well-being contributes to a cycle of better health and entrepreneurship education outcomes, more stable societies, and more sustainable development. TWYDS is committed to empowering women and young girls through education since it is essential for them to fulfill their human capability and for their families and societies to realize their full potential.

VISION

TWYDS envisions a society where women and girls are socially and politically emancipated and have attained economic empowerment leading to sustainable and self-sufficient lives.

MISSION

TWYDS aims to improve women’s socio-political and economic status and the positions of vulnerable and disadvantaged women and girls in society through creating awareness, training, sensitization and policy changes that can be made to combat ignorance, poverty and diseases.

MAIN GOAL

The organization’s main goal is the economic, social and political empowerment of marginalized women and girls in Tanzania.

CORE VALUES

TWYDS has a number of core values that guide the way the members, board, staff and partners relate and operate. The values of the TWYDS are:

• Integrity
• Accountability
• Unity
• Equality
• Spirit of voluntarism and volunteerism
• Teamwork
• Conscientiousness

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

• To promote girls’ rights with respect to girls’ care and provide them with better education and provide forums for discussing the girls’ dreams and ambitions in their life and how to make them work in the future.
• To impart knowledge on reproductive health education among primary and secondary school girls and its consequences involved in early sex and unsafe sex.
• To facilitate the change of attitude among the community members who are stereotypes in girls’ education.
• Designing concrete, evidence-based plans for program designers, donors and policymakers that empower women to control their lives and help shape the future of their communities; measuring changes in the lives of women and girls to know how best to achieve gender equality.
• Recommending policy priorities that give women opportunities to transform their lives.
• Strive to increase women’s ownership, use and control of assets and property, to empower women as economic agents and better their ability to access markets on competitive and equitable terms.

CURRENT RECORDS AND SUCCESS

TWYDS has experience working on the ground in Tanzania. So far it has gained successes in:

• Implement ‘SASA NAWEZA”, which literally means “NOW I CAN”. This project aims at empowering primary school girls to improve academic performance and impart life skills on reproductive health education.
• Implement ‘WEKA AKIBA KUONGEZA MALI’. This program focuses on empowering marginalized women in saving and getting involved in entrepreneurship activities to overcome the burden of extreme poverty in Mbeya and Dar es Salaam Cities.
• Establish the Orphanage Centre in the Mbeya region and provide education and health care services to orphans and the most vulnerable children.
• Implement social accountability initiatives such as Public Expenditure Tracking System and PIMA Card to track public expenditures in delivery of health and education services.

PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES

TWYDS undertakes its program interventions through:

• Conducting community outreach campaigns to advocate for girls’ education
• Providing training on reproductive health education for school girls
• Training specifically on women’s entrepreneurship education
• Lobbying and advocacy on policy changes to promote women’s and girls’ rights.
• Forming women’s action and organized groups

CORE ACTIVITIES/PROGRAMS

Our programs are aimed at proving long-term solutions to end poverty, injustice and illiteracy. TWYDS encourages self-reliance through sustainable development in the following areas:

Women’s Economic Empowerment

TWYDS supports programs focused on providing women access to education and training, health facilities, economic and social development, and other resources/opportunities/assets to help them achieve equity, sustainability and security. Ensuring that women have and can take advantage of full and fair opportunities to earn a living fundamental to social and economic development. The TWYDS’s program seeks to complement our existing portfolio by supporting a focused agenda on women’s economic empowerment through:

Open Market Fair Event

The Open Market Fair Event is conducted each year by TWYDS. It’s a two-day event held for the economic empowerment of women where the women entrepreneurs from various groups attend the event and sell their products, and have the opportunity to network with other big entrepreneurs as well to market their goods to potential customers.

Entrepreneurship Training

We support women’s entrepreneurship through training in production skills and techniques. In the entrepreneurship training, the women’s groups are taught how to make certain products, such as local soap, local jewelries and African patterned ‘Batik’ materials.

Savings and Basic Business Education

The women Entrepreneur groups formulated by TWYDS are taught how to start and develop a business and given the knowledge of budgeting, business management and education savings, helping them to certify businesses that adhere to quality standards in the workplace.

Girls’ Education Program

TWYDS is focusing on the development of education for girls in both urban and rural districts. The struggle against ignorance of girls who have no resources for education is a challenge. Our support is not limited to primary and secondary schools only but also on young women who never got the opportunity to complete their education. We inspire them to reach their full potential by addressing their basic needs through funding, partnerships and resources for education and vocational training. The core components of Girls’ Education Program are:

Girls’ Future Initiatives

TWYDS works with girls on “in-school” and “out-of-school” tracks. For girls who are engaged in the formal system, the focus will be on supporting them in as many ways as possible to be successful in school, attain a high school performance, and make the successful transition to post-secondary education. For girls who are out of school, the focus will be on connecting them back to school or connecting them with adult education. These programs provide high school equivalency and basic literacy instruction to out-of-school girls.

SASA NAWEZA

This program literally means ‘NOW I CAN’. The Girls’ Education Program teaches the girls to be vigilant in learning as soon as they are admitted into schools. This involves major challenges to the girls in their respective schools, whereby primary and secondary school girls are empowered with the knowledge, skills and options they need to reach their potential. Among other issues, we aim to reduce the rate of truancy, improve academic performance and teach sexual health awareness so the girls make better decisions about their bodies and lives.

Promoting Maasai Girls’ Education

TWYDS sensitizes the community about the consequences of harmful cultural practices affecting Maasai girls’ education. Girls escaping female genital mutilation have greater barriers to receiving essential services, particularly education. TWYDS strives to collaborate with government authorities, to help ensure girls are protected and to create partnerships with community leaders, educators and individual supporters to increase support available to Maasai girls.

TWYDS increases public dialogue and awareness on the practice and its harmful consequences to help shift tolerance and attitudes against it. TWYDS develops holistic programming of training and economic opportunities for women who perform the practice, to create alternative livelihood options and incentives, which can help in the process of abandoning the practice.

PARTNERS

In implementing its activities and programs, the TWYDS networks and collaborates with various organizations, including:

• UVIKIUTA
• Tanzania Women and Youth Development Society (TWYDS)
• Tanzania Coalition on Debt and Development (TCDD)
• The Leadership Forum (TLF)
• Mtwara Non Governmental Organization Network (MTWANGONET)
• Lindi Non Governmental Organization Network (LINGONET)

CONTACT US

Tanzania Women and Youth Development Society (TWYDS)
Block T Area, Kadege Street, Plot no. 169
P. O. Box 6464
Mbeya, Tanzania

Hotline: +255 713 403 231 / +255 788 319 131

[In 2013 and 2014, P4P shipped its first two pallets of sewing machines to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. In November of 2015, we got this update from Mr. Jonathan Mulokozi of Community Support Mission, our partner there.]

Dear David,

Here is our work report.

We sold 35 sewing machines, each for 100,000 Tanzania shillings (about $46 U.S.). These sales cover our shipping and port charges, so we can use the rest of the machines to make a profit.

We sold 10 of the other machines to a Member of Parliament in the Mbeya region, where she distributed the machines to women’s groups.

We use other machines in the three new sewing and training centers we opened in Karagwe. We employ 3 technicians to teach tailoring, and we have 6 students. Our main customers are primary schools and secondary schools. From the sale of clothes we make, we made 2,100,000 Tanzania shillings (about $1000 U.S.).

With income from the sewing centers plus a donation from the Edinburgh Global Partnerships, we bought a corn milling machine. With this machine we make Grade A Super Maize Flour.

Because we did not have a proper power source for the milling machine, we completed a separate project to supply it with electricity. The electricity project involved running new power lines to our machine from the main power line from Uganda to Tanzania. With the new power, ten local families have electricity for the first time.

We hope that you will be able to send more sewing machines by early 2016, and that we will have enough funds to get more bicycles and sewing machines after that.

Thanks.
Mr. Jonathan Mulokozi
CSM Tanzania, East Africa
Fall 2015

As we reported in our Spring 2014 newsletter, P4P sent 41 sewing machines to Dar es Salaam (DSM) in Tanzania in October of 2013. We shipped with the generous support of one of our valued supporters, Clif Bar Family Foundation. Our partner in Tanzania, Community Support Mission (CSM), works closely with those in poverty to help them earn their own living and create a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

On August 5, 2014, P4P prepared two additional pallets of sewing machines to continue our support of CSM.  On September 18,2014, CSM will receive in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 60 refurbished working sewing machines.  Refurbished means Dennis Smyth and Doc Hammond cleaned and fixed all of these machines; P4P is greatly indebted to them for their work. This will bring P4P’s year to date total of sewing machines shipped to 182. P4P expects to ship over 300 in 2014.

The first shipment to CSM was totally paid for by the Clif Bar Family Foundation. The value of the sewing machines in that shipment funded CSM for the majority of the shipping costs of the second shipment.  Again we used a small subsidy but going forward Community Support Mission will be capable of paying the shipping costs in total. This creates a level of sustainability that is very advantageous.

P4P needs strong reliable distribution partners run by nationals of the country involved.  With our revolving fund system, we bring our overseas partner financially into the workings of the program.  Once we have them working with us cooperatively within the finances,  we can teach them basic best practices with regards not only to their finances but to their overall program.  We start by convincing them that they can seriously help their community and do so in a net positive financial manner with P4P’s support.  Wilfredo Santana Rodriquez of Rivas, Nicaragua, started the first revolving fund program with P4P in 1992.  The value of our shipments is double or greater than the actual cost of shipping. Our partners can afford to pay the shipping costs and are better financial stewards when they do so. It does take that first shipment or two to prime the pump and adding new programs would be very difficult without our solid financial sponsors. Having strong solid partnerships domestically and internationally has been the hallmark of the success of Pedals for Progress.

by Patricia Hamill
Spring 2014 InGear

In October of 2013, with the generous support of grant money from one of our valued supporters, Clif Bar Family Foundation, P4P shipped 41 sewing machines to the region of Dar es Salaam (DSM) in Tanzania. Our partner there, Community Support Mission (CSM), works closely with those in poverty to help them earn their own living and create a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

According to CSM’s director, Jonathan Mulokozi, four of the machines went to the Messack Secondary School, located in Kivule, in the District of Ilala. Of the 350 students, 60 are orphans and 42 are from very poor families. The machines’ primary use to date has been to sew uniforms for schools. The income earned from the production of this clothing has covered school fees among other difficult costs these children must meet if they are to have an independent and economically viable adulthood.

CSM also works with families or groups in need. They donated 3 machines to women whose families were struggling to maintain decent living conditions and hoping to stay together instead of dispersing for work in far-away districts or regions. One particular woman, Anna Ntimba, was fortunate in that she already knew how to sew; however, she did not have the income to afford her own machine. Her husband was recently diagnosed with a heart disease and could not easily support the family, much less pay the hospital bills. With the machine in hand, Anna was able to earn the income she needed to keep her family together and enable her husband to begin healing.

In January of this year, CSM donated sewing machines to 4 women whose families are in poverty and cannot afford to send their children to school. CSM has also pledged to provide 2 machines to each group of 3 people who wish to form their own business. As well, 2 secondary schools in Kagera are slotted to receive sewing machines so they can continue to earn income to cover basic school needs for local orphans.

Not all the partners we work with request both sewing machines and bicycles. When this combination does come into play, there are double the opportunities opened up to people in a region, thus increasing the odds that we can create a lasting positive impact. We are looking forward to receiving news and photos of the students and their families as more machines and bicycles become available to them.

Majuto Yasini & Juma Selemani sew and sell clothes in small towns and markets in Dar Es Salaam City.  “Up to now we have been raising profit income from 20 US$ per month up to 40 US$ per month. This is a great project for us, and soon we are targeting projects in different towns: Arusha, Dodoma and Mwanza.”