Empower Tanzanian Girls Through Education

So let me introduce you to Sophia, who will be tresponsible for our project for the Masaai girls and young women. I first met Sophia online in 2012 or thereabouts. We shared our common interest in educating girls and removing the hurdles to them getting that education. Sophia is the founder and director of the Tanzania Women & Youth Development Society, an organisation which grew out of her desire to help women with HV/AIDS, who are no longer well enough to do agricultural work. That lead to women's co-operatives because there is an unemployment rate of around 10% in Tanzania. As one thing led to another, Sophia needed a safe place for women to learn, to meet and to support each other. 

But as HIV/AIDS is rife in Africa, and 1.4 million people in Tanzania are infected, Sophia wanted to move into HIV prevention, and to begin with children. Why? Because the UN indicates that 91,000 children under 15 are infected and there are 790,000 children orphaned due to AIDS. Details here. Yet research shows that every year a girl spends in secondary school, her risk of infection is lowered by 12%.

And so was born the SASA Naweza (Now I Can) project. TWYDS ran a pilot program in 2013,and as my co-founder, Paul, and I were in Africa at the time, Sophia invited me to speak at the launch of the pilot report. A cohort of 200 primary school girls participated in a Girls' Empowerment Program that taught them their legal rights concerning child marriage, that educated them concerning their reproductive health and also about the benefits of education. 

In 2015, Sophia was elected to Parliament on a women's ticket. She wants to end child marriage, develop girls leadership skills, keep them in school and in good health. She is the "go to" person for women trying to protect their daughters from child marriage and safe from Female Genital Mutilation. With Sophia and her team, your donations will be in safe hands, raising community awareness, empowering girls and developing future leaders. See more about Sophia here and here.

I you would like to see Sophia and My projects flourish, please consider telling your friends about our project and helping us over the line. We are almost halfway there re funds - we need $2,800.00 more, but we have made our forty donors. Again, I thank you all for getting us this far.