Press Release
Development in Tanzania: Amizade Students give and learn
August 4, 2009
Economic Officer Emily Shaffer yesterday met with American university students at the U.S. Embassy to discuss development in Tanzania and how the U.S. Mission is partnering with the Tanzanian Government and the private sector to further Tanzania’s development goals. Traveling from Entebbe to Karagwe then to Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, these Amizade students have explored different parts of Tanzania, trying to understand its development needs, and helped two local groups with their work. The group discussed the applicability of various development theories to the Tanzanian experience, and asked Emily Shaffer and Cultural Affairs Assistant Diana Carvalho about topics such as education, women’s equality and corruption.
Amizade is a nonprofit organization that encourages intercultural exploration and understanding through community-driven volunteer and service-learning programs in 13 communities and ten countries. Since its inception in 1994, Amizade has helped over 4,000 volunteers ages 13 to 79 contribute over 140,000 hours of service. In Tanzania, Amizade has installed water harvesting systems in cooperation with families and community organizations, extending lives through ensuring availability of one of the most basic resources, water. Spending nearly a month in Tanzania, this year’s students are from diverse disciplines and academic levels, representing West Virginia University, the University of Pittsburgh, Xavier University (Ohio), and Keene State University (New Hamphire). They are on a political science study abroad course and are all highly interested in development and the possibility of related careers, including with the State Department. http://www.amizade.org/index.html
They visited with and at times helping several of Amizade’s partner organizations in Tanzania, including Women Emancipation and Development Agency (WOMEDA) www.womeda.org, and Family Alliance for Development and Cooperation (FADECO) www.fadeco.org. Over the years, Amizade has helped with several activities including data gathering, grant applications, website development, installing water harvesting systems, and teaching English. This year’s student group has primarily helped to gather qualitative information on women's rights and perspectives in this region.
Eric Hartman, the program’s director who accompanied the students on their trip wrote in their travel blog, “Through cooperating with and supporting local organizations [in Tanzania], we can help plant some of the seeds of success. We can play a small part in making an opportunity-enabling, empowering investment in a home or community. To ignore these kinds of small – and demonstrably successful – opportunities is to ignore humanity.
Amizade is one of several U.S. organizations partnering with Tanzanian organizations to achieve mutual goals in health, education, human rights, development and democracy.