Stories from Tanzania
When our She Dares to Wander team arrived at this family's home in Tanzania, the walls were already telling the story.
Mud packed between rough-cut branches, pulling apart at the seams. A gap where the structure had given way, covered with a blanket to keep out the cold. A dirt floor. Children sleeping in a space that offered almost no protection from the rain, the wind, or the temperature that drops sharply in the Tanzanian highlands after dark. The family — including a grandmother and multiple children — had been living inside this slow collapse for longer than anyone should have to.
To rebuild this home — new walls, a solid roof, a floor the children can actually sleep on — costs $400. That number is not a typo. Four hundred dollars, in this community, covers the materials and the labor to give a family shelter that holds. It is the cost of a few dinners out, a weekend trip, a jacket you might not end up wearing. In Tanzania, it is the difference between a home and a hazard.
Alongside the home rebuild, LOTUS is also providing startup funding to local Maasai women in the surrounding community so they can purchase beads and materials to make jewelry and bags they can sell. Maasai beadwork is a centuries-old tradition, and for these women, it is also a path to income and independence. The startup cost is small. The return — in dignity, in self-sufficiency, in a woman's ability to provide for her own children — is not. Both of these projects are exactly what LOTUS Humanitarian was built to do: find the specific, solvable problems that sit just out of reach for the people living them, and connect them to the people who have the resources and the heart to help.
If you can give $400, you can rebuild this home. If you can give $50, you can contribute to the beads. If you can give $10, it goes directly to this family and this community, with nothing taken out for overhead, salaries, or administrative costs.
Donate at lotushumanitarian.com and note "Tanzania" so we can direct your gift to this project. This family is waiting. And $400 is all it takes.
Want to experience the beauty of Tanzania for yourself and take a life changing adventure? Visit www.shedarestowander.com.
