Study Room in Dormitory

Installing Toilets in Sanitation Wing

With the girls’ dormitory near completion, we are undertaking another opportunity to support the community’s efforts to create a 21st-century educational facility on the Nyegina School campus. Plans are being drafted for a community library/resource center. Architecture for Humanity Chicago is our newest partner and has agreed to undertake the design of a combined library, teacher enhancement center and computer lab. The facility will serve the Nyegina School, a nearby government primary school and the village of Nyegina. Julie Force and Laura Bowe, architects representing Architecture for Humanity Chicago, were among the volunteers who traveled to Nyegina in July 2011. Julie and Laura surveyed the proposed site at Nyegina School and met with Father Leo Kazeri, UMABU representatives, Nyegina School officials and other stakeholders in the project to develop the plan. This will be only the second library in this district of 2 million inhabitants, and a crucial piece of infrastructure for the schools and the community.

Full View of Dormitory, Sanitation Wing in Foreground

Partner organization update: In August 2011, the Northern Illinois chapter of Engineers without Borders made another onsite visit to gather information for the design of a more energy efficient cooking system that would reduce the fuel consumption. After review of the findings they chose to install the Lion Stove which is designed to be energy efficient and a Solar Thermal Water Heater which uses solar power instead of wood to heat water. Both the stove and the water heater system are designed to be low maintenance and self-sustaining. Local maintenance workers will be instructed on upkeep. A group of EWB students will travel to the Nyegina campus in January 2012 to install the stove and water heater system.

The poverty is so extreme and widespread that it is difficult for me to comprehend how people can live that way. The one room huts that dot the roadside at great distances from each other don’t have running water or electricity. The people have to walk long distances to find wood for the stove and water for cooking, bathing and laundry. The only available water often times is dirty and contaminated so it must be boiled before use. The physical labor is assigned to the females and they seemingly assume the role without argument. They walk home carrying five gallon jugs of water or 40 pound bags of grain on their heads because there is no other means of transportation. It’s a very hard life. I don’t know how they continue to hope and cope.

There are people within the community who are educated and aspire to a better way of life for themselves, for the children and for the future of the country. There are civic and social organizations that are making a difference in the lives of the less fortunate, such as the disabled, children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and women and children who have been diagnosed as HIV positive. Many of these organizations receive funding from NGOs in other parts of the world. For example, one of our partner organizations, UMABU, receives financial support from Terre des Hommes, an organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

The group of people with whom we (Tanzania Development Support) partner have a clear perspective of what they must do to improve their plight in life. They recognize that education of the children, particularly the girls, is critical to a promising future for all. They are educated and have an unshakable determination to do what needs to be done to change. I was particularly impressed by the women teachers at the school who told me that they must teach the girls to respect themselves and believe that they deserve a life that is far better than fetching wood and water.

While I was there I noted that social behavior was often dictated by cultural beliefs and traditions but I wasn’t there long enough to learn what these beliefs are. Next time I go I hope to get a better understanding of the cultural influences.

I can’t find the words to describe the gentleness and kindness of the people we met. The beauty is in their hearts and souls and is reflected in their eyes and smiles. The smiles are wide white grins that light up their faces and connected to my soul. That’s the picture that comes to mind when I reflect on the experience.

Tricia DeBoo,
TDS Board Member and 2011 Volunteer Trip Member

Our original logo and visual branding was designed and very generously donated in 2008 by Jarret Byrne and Solvo Media. TDS was a brand-new organization then, with a smaller board of directors and an uncertain future. At that time, this logo and the website it lived on served TDS very well. It even challenged TDS to look toward the future.

Today, TDS has sent two volunteer trips to Tanzania, completed a major construction project, raised and used nearly $150,000, and sends out a quarterly newsletter to 450 supporters. TDS has grown to include the experiences, work, and hopes of hundreds of volunteers, donors, and partners. When board looks at the communications we send to our friends, old and new, something is missing. What’s missing is a visual representation of the richness of experience that TDS now encompasses.

I’ll admit that I fought against a logo re-design for some time, knowing the work it would take to implement it and corollary changes to the visual branding. I think it wasn’t until the summer of 2011, when I saw the pictures coming back from the study trip in Tanzania – the same trip I took in 2009 – that I was convinced that the rich experience I’ve had as a TDS volunteer wasn’t unique to me. The experience of many more volunteers needed to be expressed and celebrated, and the current logo just couldn’t do that. We had surpassed the challenge presented by our first logo.

Our new logo was designed by University of Minnesota student Carlye Kussard and Edgewood College graduate Katrina Ervin, with input on typography selection by graphic designer Victoria Pater. When they volunteered their creativity and experience, I challenged them to express this in the new logo:

“We see TDS as distinctive because it forms very close relationships with other organizations, people, and communities in Tanzania. We see ourselves as partners and are very committed to our partners in Tanzania, working through set-backs as they arise. Our projects are the priorities of communities and organizations in Tanzania. We work from their strategic plans and join in the visions they have for their own communities. We are committed to having our volunteers and donors experience the communities in which we work firsthand, and to form long-term relationships between individuals. We also see our role as informing others through experience and in a nuanced way, which is why we take student and volunteer trips to Tanzania. During these trips, we don’t try to tell people what to think, but provide first-hand information, and ask them to reflect on their experiences and share them with others.”

An impossible assignment, surely!

Over a few months, we went back and forth over symbols, colors, and ideas. The board was originally presented with four initial concepts and selected one to be further developed. The board and other volunteers made further selections on typography, color, and minor style aspects and selected this for the new TDS logo.

Communicating a nuanced view of Tanzania is an important challenge. Tanzania is generally not well understood by Americans or Europeans. Because of this, there are few symbols of Tanzania that are easily recognizable to TDS’s donor and volunteer audience. Something that is quite striking throughout Tanzania is color. There are parts of Tanzania that remind me of the foothills of Colorado, where I grew up, but nowhere in Colorado have I ever seen clothing, food, and buildings with such vibrant and memorable colors. Color is how this logo authentically connects Tanzanian experience to a visceral experience for our supporters at home.

We hope you like this new logo to represent the experience that surrounds TDS and our hopeful future. We plan to roll the logo out in our communications towards the end of this year. Since TDS is built on the work, skill, and support of our volunteers, donors, and partners, I welcome all of you to share your feedback on this new logo with me in comments below, on Facebook, Twitter or at tswan@tdsnfp.org.

Tracey Swanson, Chair
TDS Volunteer Marketing Committee

Bagamoyo was a successful outing!  We ended the day with dinner by the sea side hosted by several professors from Dar University.

Today we are off to explore Bagamoyo, a historic slave trading town.

We are now in Zanzibar, and yesterday we met 2 fantastic NGOs. The first is a group of women who have been an NGO for 20 years, Catalyst for Women Empowerment in Zanzibar. Members of the group, and alumni, include members of parliament in Zanzibar and the Union government, as well as doctors and other professionals. A second group is only 5 months old, a grass-roots, community-based organization (CBO) that is about 62 women and men dedicated to turning their neighborhood in Zanzibar/Stone Town around, fighting school dropouts, drug addiction, and getting their girls to stay in school through secondary school graduation. They were inspiring. Tomorrow we head back to Dar and will spend the evening with a Tanzanian judge who grew up in Etaro, a village neighboring Nyegina; he has recently been appointed to the international criminal court and he wants to say thank you to the students for volunteering to help build the dormitory in Nyegina.

We are making a difference here. Please help us finish this dormitory. It means a whole world of difference to the girls who will live in this dorm for years to come.

Asante,
Dr. T.

Please take a moment to donate toward finishing the dormitory. We only need another $2500 in contributions for this short campaign!

We are working hard today, our last to work on the dorm. We are hauling sand for mixing cement, painting walls, and filling cement around the window frames. We are excited to be seeing progress toward the completion of this dormitory wing.

Thanks for all of your support, spiritual as well as financial! You can use the link below to make a gift online using PayPal:

Asante,
Dr. T.

Dan worked on staining some of the dorm’s new chairs.