Tanzania - Villagers at the helm

92560 Tanzania: Villagers at the Helm May 3, 2004 The Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), takes an annual budget of -- Resources -- $15 million and spreads it in small doses across more than 2,200 similar projects in the poorest rural areas of the country, including the Zanzibar Full Story (PDF) English | Swahili archipelago. A $60 million loan from the World Bank is financing TASAF’s Audio clip first four years. Drawing on a national database of poverty statistics, the Fund has pinpointed the poorest third of Tanzania’s districts for its Project programs. Rather than have bureaucrats in the capital chose which The World Bank in services and programs go where, the agency goes straight to the villages and asks them what Tanzania they need. The villagers take the helm from designing the project to making it a reality. Also available in: Español | Français “They get some seed money to get started.” --Zuhura Mdungi In Tanzania, a government-backed community development fund is asking some of the country’s poorest villages to contribute 20 percent toward project costs. “We want them to say, ‘This is our road, this is our school’…When the project ends, it is the responsibility of the community to take care of it,” says Michael Kyande, a Tanzania Social Action Fund program manager. Villages are choosing their own programs. Some have chosen to upgrade roads; others have built irrigation canals or health clinics. The poorest members of the village are employed. For people like Florida John, a mother of five who bought two goats with her wages, the project has changed her life. “This project has given me a beginning,” she said. “I have a direction now.” --Florida John A road project in northeastern Tanzania, which provided jobs for the poorest villagers in Sumve, changed 30-year-old Florida John’s life. With the $90 she earned from her three months’ work on the road, she bought two goats, which have already produced three kids. The family also plans to replace their home’s thatched roof with corrugated metal. Life is looking up for John and her husband and five children. Instead of living hand to mouth, if hard times hit, they can sell a goat for money. “This project has given me a beginning; it’s like a foundation,” she says. “We never expected to have a health center close to us so soon.” --Frederick Antony Before the health clinic was built in Byeju, its 5,000 residents had to travel 15 kilometers by mule or on foot to reach the nearest dispensary. In the first two months of 2004 alone, 60 children died, mostly from malaria as they succumbed to fever or dehydration. Women in labor were carried to the clinic on crude carts made of wooden planks. Twenty of them died in 2003, according to Frederick Antony, a member of the village governing committee. With the new clinic, many of these deaths will be prevented. “We are excited,” Antony says. “We started thinking of how we could help each other.” --Annamaria Simioni When Annamaria Simioni’s husband passed away seven years ago, she was left to support seven people, including four children.  She took up small-scale farming to support herself, but was unable to produce enough to sustain her large family. Then she banded together with 27 other widows and, through a World Bank-supported Tanzanian government community development project, the women took up farming rice, both as a cash crop and a subsistence crop. “Progress is encouraging,” says Simioni. “Our morale is high.” Updated May, 2004