Capacity-building & Organisational Development

Orphan Foster Care

The number of children orphaned in Tanzania by the devastating effects of HIV and AIDS increases daily. Many of these children are forced to live on the streets, where they beg for food to survive. Others are taken into children’s homes where they often exist in an artificial environment, which can present problems when the child matures and is forced to re-enter the society they have not been exposed to.

 

Therefore, a growing trend in Tanzania is to support orphans to live in the community with either an extended-family member, or other guardian, in foster parent type of setting. Children then remain in a family setting and therefore learn the social skills necessary along with the customs of their culture as well.

 

Orphans in children’s homes or orphanages attend the local government primary schools. However, some do still fail to attend, as they cannot even afford the small amount of money required to buy a uniform and some writing materials. Also, education in Tanzania, though having improved exponentially over the past few years still leaves a lot to be desired.

Classes often have up to 150-200 pupils, and primary school only lasts half a day. It is therefore difficult for children to learn and succeed in school. For children to succeed in life, a good education is imperative.

 

The main role of the volunteers will be to provide supplementary English lessons to orphaned children. Volunteers will also be able to help to create educational materials for the community regarding the importance of foster parenting. The program is also in need of assistance to write proposals and funding applications so that the program can be expanded to support more children.

Income-Poverty Reduction

SAIDIA, working with its partners, aims to support a number of sustainable poverty reduction initiatives. This facet of our programme is solely focused on reducing the number of people living beneath the poverty line (i.e. $1 a day). We do this by initiating or enhancing potentially profitable businesses. 

 

All progress is to be documented, because the ultimate goal in terms of income-poverty reduction, is to design an informal training programme that targets people below the poverty line.

 

We believe that true sustainability can only be borne from the willingness of those we try to help. Anyone with any level of business knowledge could be of use in this particularly difficult venture.

Over recent years, a significant amount of effort has gone to enhance people’s understanding of HIV and AIDS. As a result, more people are getting tested and receiving the counselling that was never made available before.

 

Alongside these endeavours has been an increase in the positive steps taken toward people already living with HIV in order to reduce the spread of the disease and help them to cope both mentally and physically.

 

Despite efforts by the Tanzanian Government and other Private parties, HIV and AIDS still takes many lives and infect more and more people everyday. This outreach programme is intended to reduce rates of infection—especially in students, provide accurate information on the transmission and effects of HIV and AIDS and eliminate the stigma that is a near constant throughout Tanzania.

HIV & AIDS Education

Volunteers shall have the opportunity to take part in the different parts of our HIV and AIDS Education programme. Working with SAIDIA and our partners, volunteers can:

Visit both schools and the community at large, passing on their knowledge of the disease, contraception and behavioural change.

OR

Participate in an awareness programme that uses the superior entertaining skills of more than a dozen peer educators. The group, or “kikundi,” as it is known in Swahili, visits all the wards in Mwanza region, with more focus on the rural areas. They also visit schools where the message is most needed, because after all, what do we have, if not the next generation?

We strongly believe that in order to help communities, it is not necessary to initiate new projects.

SAIDIA is partnered with several organisations that have a diverse range of ongoing activities. Each of our partner organisations were chosen on merit, but they all share similar financial and personnel constraints.

Volunteers will work with SAIDIA in our bid to improve the efficiency and capacity of our partners so as to heighten their positive impact on the community.

Volunteers could:

Assist our partner organisations with accounting systems and money management

Compile information on their different activities and assist in project write-ups.

Identify possible sources of funding and assist them in the preparation of funding applications/proposals.

Support organisations in their planning, monitoring and evaluation activities.

Home-based Care for people living with HIV & AIDS

Owing to the fact that many people discover that they are infected with HIV late, they react poorly to the treatment. This usually results in the patients being discharged from Hospital for terminal care at home, where the care is most likely insufficient.

 

Home-based care, while emotionally the most challenging, is one of our programme’s strongest areas.

With approximately 50 people within our projects living with HIV and AIDS, a fair number of whom are terminally ill or cannot care for themselves, it is easy to see why.

By way of our Partners, the Home-based Care Programme aims to provide the basic knowledge, materials and economic assistance to those who care for such patients.

Volunteering in this programme would give one the opportunity to improve the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS by both giving care to the ill and learning how to train resident caregivers.

Whether experienced in this field or not, one will find that there is more than enough work to be done.

Tangible Activities

Our tangible activities are particularly popular with groups and consist mainly of a variety of different building projects that normally do not take place until all of the funding and manpower has been acquired. SAIDIA and its partners go to great lengths to ensure that the fine balance between successful volunteering and usurping of temporary employment is maintained. We do so by insisting that a number of local workmen be included in each build.

Tangible activities require a proportionately larger amount of funding to purchase materials and provide salaries for hired workmen. For this reason, groups are good because the costs of the build can be spread out among the participants. However it is not unheard of that a single individual can successfully fund and participate in a build.