On Friday, January 24th,  2014 the TFFT team and our partners started a journey to learn from Mkombozi an organization here in Arusha Community. Mkombozi supports Tanzania’s most vulnerable children and youth through housing, education, research, advocacy, and outreach. In addition to working with children already living and working on the streets, Mkombozi works to end the abuse and neglect of children, to ensure that children’s rights are recognized, and to identify opportunities for intervention before a child migrates to the street. We were eager to learn more!

In total we brought together 16 people from 10 organizations (TFFT, Step by Step Learning Centre, Matonyok Parents Trust, Star High Secondary School, AfricAid, a representative from Meru district, VUMIVU, Happy Watoto English medium School and Children Center, Green Foundation Trust, and our host Mkombozi Centre).

We divided into two groups, each with a leader from Mkombozi. The main focus of the trip was to learn about: happy and sad boxes, alternative discipline, the safe school concept, child protection, and how Mkombozi reintegrates children back into the community. We visited five government primary schools and had a chance to meet the Child Protection Committees at Ward office Unga Limited. Lastly we visited Mkombozi Office for an overview of Mkombozi’s programs.

Oh! You must be surprised how we managed to cover all these areas in a day. It was really a very busy day.

One interesting concept was the happy and sad box. Students write things that make them happy or sad whenever they came across them whether at home, within the school, classroom, outside the school. The head of one school said,

“Since [we started using this box], my work has been very easy because students can report if the teacher did not come to class or did not teach and so many other things.”

A social worker said,

“It was through this box one student explain[ed] the abuse she was going through every day at home and the matter was reported to the police.”

We were impressed to see how this helped the school management address issues raised by students; it also helped the child protection committees to address issues in the community. Apart from these two examples we heard a lot of testimonies from teachers and child protection committees how this help them doing their work.

In this picture you can see a team chatting with teachers at Kaloleni Primary school about Mkombozi’s training on alternative discipline. We heard a lot of testimonies that teachers and students became more of a family and that students are more obedient to the school rules as a result of Mkombozi’s training.

With the safe school concept we learned about protection measures for students who attend schools located in dangerous areas.

This is one of the school we visited that had wall constructed to protect students from outsiders who passes through the school.

It was a very busy and eye-opening day! Our partners all appreciated this learning opportunity, and they commended TFFT for arranging this visit. They admited that if it was not TFFT they would not be able to learn from organizations such as Mkombozi. They also said they now have new ideas to take to their organizations and improve how they take care of orphans and vulnerable children. Some also said they have increased their network through this visit and they can reach out to each other whenever they need.

TFFT learned that there are programs conducted by Mkombozi that are similar to our own programs. We also learned that apart from protecting children Mkombozi also finds support for the very needy children who passed to go to secondary school and cannot afford to pay the schools fees. The trip was a blessing too because one of our partner committed to pay fees for one student for the whole year! We are very thankful to Mkombozi organization for making this visit possible and their time to take us through all these areas they are working. We commend them for their engagement in the community and the good work of protecting children.