I am reaching out to my friends and family today to raise awareness about the Amani centre’s pressing need for donations.
Although Amani has partners in the Uk and Netherlands, it needs to increase its network of supporters as every month the organization struggles to make ends meet. This is mainly due to the rise of costs in food and fuel, and expansion of the centre.
To the right side of my blog are links to the Amani center’s websites and a BBC article about it, which invite you to read. But here is also an overview of the current activities:
Establishment:
The Amani Centre was founded in 1992 by Josephine Bakhita who herself is a mother of a late intellectually disabled child. The headquarters and school are based in Morogoro municipality at Chamwino along Dar es Salaam – Iringa highway.
However in order to bring its services closer to the rural communities the Centre opened outreach Centres at Movorero and Mikese – more rural areas 80Km and 30Km respectively out of town.
Amani Centre Vision:
To ensure that persons with mental and multiple disabilities within Morogoro Diocese are identified, registered, and assisted to get such basic needs as health care, physiotherapy basic education, food, shelter, safe and clean water on a sustainable basis.
Amani Centre Mission:
To ensure that mentally and multiply disabled persons rights and needs - both in and outside of the Morogoro Diocese - are being acknowledged and respected.
Amani Centre program:
Since it’s establishment, the organization has worked with children with a range of disabilities both mental and physical. The size of the target group within the region of operation is vast.
Through Amani’s outreach clinics and awareness raising - 3,667 children have been identified within its catchment area as having some aspect of physical or mental disability. Of these, many have had relatively minor disabilities and sight problems, and we work closely with the Disability Hospital in Dar Es Salaam to refer for corrective services.
Nevertheless this still leaves a vast number of children with mental and multiple disabilities within the region who are the focus of our Community Based Rehabilitation.
The support of this marginalized group is essential within a poor country like Tanzania. The experience of Amani - on both personal and professional levels - is that giving birth to a disabled child in this economic situation has severe effects for the family as a whole. Not only does the disability bring stigma and isolation; it also incurs further burden and cost to already impoverished families and makes it difficult for the mother to work. Medical treatments, therapies and nutrition are expensive and these services are often located up to 200km from the family home, thus incurring additional travel and subsistence costs – which prove too often to be impossible to match.
Therefore families with Disabled children are amongst the poorest in the society, and those most in need of emotional and practical support and education from our community based rehab services.
The Amani Centre, among other things is involved with the following activities:
- Building safe and loving communities of intellectually disabled youth,
in urban and rural centres. Whilst we strive to enable disabled youth to live successful and fulfilled lives in their own communities, this is often not possible and conditions in which some of members have been found are heart breaking. There are thus currently three such residential communities run by Amani: one in Morogoro town, and two in rural sub-centres; they are aimed at serving those intellectually disabled and multiply disabled youth who are unable to live with their own families for some of the sad reasons documented above. Here, the children and youth are enabled to experience the love of a faith based community, freedom, skills and knowledge learning, as well as to practice independence and build relationships with other community members. Much more of how these communities function is written in a further document entitled ‘the Amani community’.
- Day care for the disabled
One of the main daily focuses of Amani’s work at it’s Headquarters in Morogoro. Those physically and Mentally disabled children who are able to walk to Amani Centre are taught and cared for by a special needs teacher, several community workers and voluntary youth. The centre has three classrooms and an excellent school hall. This allows mothers to have a break from their children and allows the children to play and learn together in a safe and controlled environment. Children can also receive healthcare and physiotherapy during their school day – as necessary
- Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR)
This vital aspect of Amani’s work is done through regular home visiting and outreach to children and their families who cannot travel to the Centre in Morogoro and Mvomero. Community workers and the physio visit them in their homes (normally on bicycles – which can be up to 7 miles away!) to deliver medication, counseling, physiotherapy or educational exercises relevant to the child’s disability. They can also deliver simple provisions to the neediest of families, and help create equipment for physically handicapped children out of local materials. They also update themselves on the health and development of the child since the previous visit. In this way, the children are rehabilitated most importantly within their own communities, neighbors and relatives can all be involved in the rehab; furthermore monitoring of the conditions and appropriate referrals to our partner disability hospital in Dar Es Salaam can also be made.
- Health and Physiotherapy
The Amani Centre’s Head Quarters in Morogoro houses an impressive physiotherapy room with equipment from a UK donor charity. We have been able to distribute several wheelchairs to the children we serve in the local community. Several children come for outpatient physiotherapy, however, many of the neediest children who would benefit from using the equipment and skills on offer are unable to get to the centre as there is no transport available and mothers find it impossible to carry the bigger children on their backs …although some do try!
- Secondary education support.
The Centre supports girls from poorer backgrounds and families of children with mental disabilities, with the aim to return and support their respective families.
- Farming and Vocational Trading for Disabled youth at Mikese and Mvomero (rural outpost farms).
Disabled children and youth either live on site or come from local villages. This enables the children to learn valuable skills and can therefore help their communities and families. The courses being given include tailoring, mat- making, poultry and goat keeping in which the disabled children are involved with the guide of voluntary local youths.
- Income generating activities schemes.
Amani Centre conducts different small income generating activities for the sake of its sustainability, such as craft production and small scale farming in it’s two rural outposts.
- Public awareness and capacity building
This is of great importance to Amani’s ethos and is carried out by Amani Centre awareness group – via drumming, singing and dance, as well as talks and demonstrations. Mothers are invited to the Centre with their children and friends to be taught how they can care for and love their children as they would any other healthy child. Amani also has a very good local public profile and carries out talks and awareness raising in local schools and religious groups and within whole villages.
- Outreach
Whilst Amani has done well to create awareness and identify the disabled population in the more urban surroundings of it’s headquarters – many rural areas remain untouched. It is here that many of the worst cases of disability, poverty, mistreatment and neglect are witnessed. Amani collaborates with partners to run outreach clinics in rural areas to register, administer healthcare and make appropriate referrals for all manner of disabilities.
How to make a donation:
If you are interested in making a donation, even $10 or $20 would make a difference. To give you an example, it cost $360 including transport to buy rice, wheat flour, sugar, oil and beans for the center (about 45 people) to last us 1 month. $20 is less than you would generally pay for dinner in a restaurant. $10 represents maybe 3 coffees to go.
Donations so far have been deposited into my savings account through Paypal. Signing up to Paypal is free and can be done by going to www.paypal.com or to login: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run
It’s a great way to make secure online payments and transfer money. You will find my account by typing in my email address: didine1031@gmail.com. I have been taking the money out of my savings in Tanzanian shillings and giving it to Amani. Paypal states exactly what was deposited so I know what is donation money and what is my personal money.
The Amani center is a Non Profit Organization and Non Governmental. I am working on finding out if the donations can be tax deductible and will keep you updated.
Please specify if you’d like your donation to go towards a certain aspect of Amani for example education, physiotherapy, food or day care.
I personally think what is urgent right now is to fight the food crisis. There are different ways: donating money for food and fuel, but also, Amani has been trying to raise money for a tractor and irrigation systems for the Mvomero farm to increase its self sustainability in the culture of crops. Currently all the farming is done by hand and the water supply is obsolete. To own a tractor and improve their irrigation system would have a great long-term effect.
Another example: the youth that lives and works at the center in exchange for secondary education, often struggles to buy notebooks at the beginning of their term.
Also Amani has been trying to raise money to buy a new van as the one they used to pick up disabled children for daycare has broken down for good, thus preventing many children from coming to daycare for the past 6 months. Part of the money has been raised, but there is still a ways to go.
If you have any questions, please email me at didine1031@gmail.com. If you decide to donate, I will give you a personal update as to where your money was used.
1 comment:
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