A Glimpse Into Community Outreach Work in Tanzania - by Alexa Bascon

On this day of our trip, we had two very exciting site visits to look forward to. Our first stop of the day was to Faraja Pallotti Arusha where our group had the opportunity to speak with Mary and Hidaya, two of the individuals who work there and gave us an overview of some of the work that they do. Pallotti is a wonderful organization created in 2013 that is dedicated to helping special needs children, their families, and their caretakers. Typically, they help children with physical disabilities. The aim of the organization is to teach the mamas/guardians so that they can help their children at home with physical therapy and so that they are more well informed overall about special needs and the ways they can help their children lead better and healthier lives. Pallotti provides physical therapy sessions for the children to help achieve this goal. Most of the clients who come here to Pallotti are referred by the hospital and Pallotti offers their services to them free of charge. They sometimes even offer transportation fee coverage when their finances permit. Typically, Faraja Pallotti Arusha helps between 40 to 50 clients per month on average, although if they advertise their services actively then they can get up to 100 clients in a month. They currently have 60 active clients that they assist on a regular basis. 

There are few places such as Pallotti in Tanzania that offer free therapy and other resources for special needs. One of the things that makes Pallotti unique in what they do, is their approach to physical therapy which is at odds with the local cultural beliefs of the country. At Pallotti, they believe that physical therapy should be fun and enjoyable for children, even though Tanzanian cultural belief is that there must be pain for progress to be made. The organization also seeks to dispel misinformation among families with special needs children who hold the misinformed idea that the reason their child has disabilities is because of witchcraft. This education is extremely important for these children because, in many cases, they would otherwise be hidden away at home due to shame and preconceived notions of what it means to have and care for a special needs child. One aspect of the program that really stood out to me personally when Mary and Hidaya were talking to us is when they informed us that they often have the mamas of the children link up together after physical therapy sessions for tea and community support for each other. I think this is such an incredible asset to the program that they not only care for the wellbeing of the children, but also for the caretakers because it is very common and normal for caretakers to feel overwhelmed and stressed by their role and having an outlet to be able to vent and share with others who understand their situation personally is incredibly valuable. Mary and Hidaya were both so lovely, welcoming, and knowledgeable, and it was a privilege to get to spend time with the and understand all that they have achieved for their community. 

On our next site visit, we went and visited Inherit Your Rights and spoke with the Community Outreach Department and the Legal Aid Department. Winnie, their Director of Operations, gave our student group a general overview of how Inherit Your Rights operates and the main goals and challenges that it faces as well as sharing some facts and figures regarding women and children in Tanzania. Inherit Your Rights' core mission is to educate widows on their right to inherit, and above all, seeks to eradicate gender-based injustice through education and advocacy. Awareness, access, and action are the primary ways that the organization works to achieve this mission. They raise awareness of women's rights through seminars, community training events, short educational courses, and promotional media. They create access to justice for women in the community by offering free legal aid services to women and girls in need and they equip women to take action to fight for their rights through their community advisor program and legal procedure training program. 

Within the country, there is a lack of awareness of the law that grants widows property rights of their husband upon his death. This unawareness is typically due to the customary laws in the nation. Under customary law, a widow has no right to inherit land and often has no right to own land at all. One of the biggest challenges Inherit Your Rights faces is overcoming customary law because, although customary law does not control on paper, it does in practice. Cultural traditions and practices often clash with access and execution of justice in the nation. Inherit Your Rights works to break down these cultural barriers to justice through their method of awareness, access, and action, with which they are able to educate women and their communities to know and understand what rights they do legally possess, provide an access channel for these women to bring their claims to court by offering free legal aid services, and equip them to take action themselves to defend their rights through their legal procedure mentoring program. Because of these amazing efforts, in 2021, Inherit Your Rights was successful in providing legal and human rights training to over 10,000 people, provide free legal aid and counseling services to 127 women, and equipped 90 women to become Community Advisors through their community advisor program. 

These two wonderful organizations speak to the progress that is being made in Tanzania to create resources that work to improve upon child welfare in the country. They were both fantastic organizations to have been able to gain valuable insight from and to learn about their core missions and values and what community resources they utilize to further those missions and what they still hope to achieve in the future.