in Tanzania

Listen to the Interview in English (Windows Media - 2.1 MB)

Q. Please describe the services that you offer one of these children. For example, Ramadhani - do you know him?

Namfahamu, Kwa sababu huwa tunakwenda kufanya verifikeshon (Swahili for ‘I know him because we normally go to verify information that we receive from villages’). We visited him. His father died and his mother was and is still very sick. Even the brother and sister. You know, they don’t feed well and… But he completed primary school education, which is class seven, last December. These most vulnerable children’s committee selected him again to go for vocational training- so he is now schooling again.

Q. Tell me about some of the children like Ramadhani- what support do you give them, how do you identify them and make sure that they keep receiving support from you?

Some of them have been supported with shelter, food, school uniforms- two sets of uniforms in a year, and shoes, exercise books and pens. We also provide food and health services. Here in Tanzania we have a community health fund where households contribute to health programmes. The community members also contribute a little towards health services. The community members are mobilized to identify these children who need assistance after getting the name from the structure in the community called the “Most Vulnerable Children’s Committee.” They direct the partner to the child who has been identified as needy. In most cases our partners rely on them to distribute these services to children.

Q. Who are these most vulnerable children’s committees and how do they work?

They are people from the village. They are not paid, they are just volunteers. They are selected by the community members in a meeting. Most of them are from faith based organizations, while some of them are just influential people; some are orphan caretakers, and some from organizations working within the communities. Then there are two children: a boy and a girl, who are also members of this committee. They effect the plan for the community to support the children after being identified. The committee will go around the households, collect money and keep it for the children. For example they built 125 houses within a month. When they were building them, each community member including those from the committee contributed 50 bricks. They made these bricks from a hard type of soil.

Q. What has impressed you most about the programme?

In the communities where we go, before didn’t know that there were so many children in need. The most vulnerable children committees are really helping us to identify and support them. When we’d go to identify them we’d find them in desperate situations, they didn’t have food, they didn’t access health, and they didn’t go to school up to when they were 10. These children and their relatives didn’t even attend village meetings because they were really having problems. What’s really impressing me is that two weeks or a month after we start supporting, we find them and their communities so happy! The Global Fund has helped by giving us the funds and monitoring and this is making the government work harder to change the systems. If the Global Fund had not pushed us I don’t think we would have reached any child by now. It is making it seen that non-governmental organizations like PACT can make things happen and change some of the rigid government systems. In future we feel that this programme is going to be owned by the communities.