The truth is that Kizzie is lucky to be able to play because it means that she has a childhood to enjoy.

Picture learners in groups, many deeply engaged in discussions, several predicting whether an object is an insulator or a conductor, others attaching wires to voltmeters to test their predictions, some recording their findings.

Meet the Mamas of the Rift Valley Women’s Group

Once she felt safe, Neema was finally able to focus inside the classroom and has been a star student ever since. 

In the coming months we will be soliciting applications, interviewing, and selecting a Director of the Rift Valley Children’s Village to join Peter in assuming many of those managerial responsibilities here at RVCV. 

On July 15th, we celebrated our 620 fabulous microfinance clients at TCF’s Annual Microfinance Day! 

Cognizant of the strain that child care can place on families, six years ago, when a new mother teaching at Gyetighi Primary School had to split her attention between her new child and the classroom, the Tanzanian Children’s Fund (TCF) saw an opportunity to support teachers and their families by offering free daycare for their children.

When we held our first parent-teacher conference at Gyetighi Primary School ten years ago, I was shocked to see only a handful of people show up. 

TCF’s Malengo Mamas and Babas are unsung heroes and are perfect examples of how “the ripple effect” is taking place in our community. 

Vincent Thlemu is a perfect example of TCF’s work coming full circle. 

When a mother walks into the Rural Community Health Clinic seeking medical care for her child, Nurse Gretchen doesn’t just see an opportunity to treat the child, she also sees the opportunity to improve the health of his caretaker.

Meet Mery, one of our most enterprising microfinance clients. Mery joined our program in 2012 and used her first loan of $120 to build a small shop in Oldeani town.

Faraja Dawite was just 4 years old when her mother died during the delivery of her youngest sister Neema. Faraja was left in the care of her disabled father, who disappeared just a year later. 

For most of Sinora’s life, all she heard was people telling her “no.” Like many other young girls living in the developing world, she grew up in a system that always seemed to be working against her.

The Rift Valley Children’s Village is their home, we are their family, and that lasts forever. 

With no task too small or too large, Selestian Damas is RVCV’s best kept secret in accomplishing it’s mission of transforming communities, building brighter futures, and creating change in Tanzania.

Gretchen joined TCF’s team last November, and brings the “3 H’s”—Health, Humor, and Hope—to all of the patients at our Rural Community Health Clinic.

Six months have now come and gone as a long term volunteer at Rift Valley. What started out as strange and foreign has progressed into comfortable and familiar. 

In some ways, it seems like it was only yesterday that I was welcoming kids like Jackie and Lucy to the Children’s Village and into their new family.

Can you imagine being a house father for 21 teenage boys, handling disciplinary issues for two local schools, managing RVCV’s Kids Living with Relatives program, and helping serve as a support system for all of the children at RVCV?