MAVUNO Project

Projects

Water Tank Program

MAVUNO has been building Rain Water Harvesting Tanks for many years to support the rural population in Karagwe with clean water. This project was first initiated because people here, especially women and children, are often forced to walk up to six hours a day to fetch water from sources that are usually contaminated and frequently insufficient. Due to this time-consuming chore, children are often unable to attend to their educational responsibilities or recreational liberties and women have little time for work beyond subsistence activities. Even if community members are lucky enough to live in close proximity to water, the quality is reliably poor due to the multi-purpose usage of the source. It is not unusual for people to drink from water that was just used for washing laundry or quenching the thirst of cattle.

As essential as it is for people in this area to access water as soon as possible, it is also understood that hand-outs will never constitute a successful and sustainable way to progress. In order for such initiatives as tank construction to achieve a multiplier effect, more community members must see themselves as capable of improving their situation without total reliance on outside assistance. Knowing that direct involvement and a sense of ownership are key components to ensuring proper upkeep, MAVUNO employs a model in which the partner organizations provide the funds for expensive materials such as gutters and cement, while families are expected to provided labor for excavation and construction work and even to contribute local materials such as stones and sand.

The sustainability of the water projects is ensured by adhering to a number of procedures. Regular evaluations are carried out to ensure good cooperation between the tank owners, MAVUNO and partner organizations. This includes assisting the owners with the right usage and observing the condition of the tank to see if further maintenance is necessary. After the tanks have been filled during the rainy season, extensive tests and procedures are carried out to assure good water quality.
In addition to the provision of clean water for rural households, local jobs are created during the construction phase of the water harvesting tanks.

Needy Children Program

Beginning in 2004, the Needy Children Program has supported families who have young children prohibited from entering school doors due to extremely low income. In the villages of Ihanda, Rukole, Chonyoyo, and Mabira, up to the end of 2010 MAVUNO has helped to make education possible for 284 children.
Inhibiting circumstances such as exceptionally low family income, deceased parents, alcoholism, domestic violence, and inadequate housing prevent a significant amount of Tanzanian citizens from obtaining even the most basic level of education. In accordance with the UN mandated Millenium Development Goals of 2000, MAVUNO recognizes primary level education as a basic right and has prioritized its work accordingly.
However, every child, even children living in the most remote and dire of circumstances, must be granted this right. Tanzania cannot allow its young citizens to continue to fall through the cracks and miss out on education that is sorely needed both at the individual and national level. This affirmation has driven the work of the Needy Children's Program for the past 7 years.

MAVUNO has committed itself to the efficient channeling of funds from donors to primary schools, covering the costs necessitated by enrollment fees, school uniforms and shoes as well as exercise books and notebooks, pens and pencils, calculators, and rulers. Hygenic supplies are also provided, including items such as soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, for in obtaining one's education, dignity is an invaluable component, and all children must be aided to the extent that is possible to spend their learning hours at school with a sense of confidence.

Agriculture and Environmental Conservation

With the start of the Food and Seed Security Program in 2008, MAVUNO field extension worker, Ibrahim Bamuhiga, He is working with 50 small groups holder subsistence farmers with the purpose of holding educational seminars and participatory workshops about agricultural methods that can be used for increased outputs and improved efficiency. The objectives of this program are for all farmers to adopt sustainable, high-yield techniques in their own plots, and for more members to properly maintain healthy, productive animals such as goats and chickens. Methods and approaches include the practice of manure application, which employs the symbiotic relationship between agriculture and husbandry, meanwhile replacing more expensive and environmentally destructive inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. During the course of this program, farmers have had the opportunity to learn about seed maintenance, plant splicing, post harvesting processing, and record keeping. At the end of a three year period, a thorough evaluation will be conducted to see if the farmers have managed to significantly improve their output after having participated in the program.

Also in 2008, MAVUNO established a Demonstration Plot in the village of Chonyonyo with the purpose of experimentation and practical training. At this site, Ibrahim and local farmers worked together to sow beans, cassava, pineapple, bananas, sweet potatoes, and trees such as pine and acrocarpus fraxinfolious. During sowing the planters adhered to technical methods such as proper spacing between seeds to prevent cross pollination, and strategic organization of shade trees and food crops. The plot continues to provide a forum for education whereby farmers can try out various techniques as to supplement the theoretical information that is taught during seminars. In the meantime, members are actively employing these new methods on their own plots, and continue to take turns hosting monthly meetings at individual farms as to share amongst themselves what has been tried and what has been learned.

A new initiative under the Agriculture and Environmental Conservation Program is the Chonyonyo Tree Nursery, which started in 2010. Different types of tree seedlings were raised in order to address the severe environmental degradation in Karagwe district caused by slash-and-burn agriculture and soil erosion. Other uses are soil rejuvenation, provision of firewood to local community members, and to improve air quality and the general environment.

One of MAVUNO’s goals is to develop farmer’s activities from mainly subsistence to efficient, business oriented practices.
The construction of the new 1,200 m² Food and Seed Storage Building is designed to sell their agricultural products at higher prices, introduction of good storage practices and to reduce the vulnerability of rural families during seasons of privation. The building will also be utilized for public programming including workshops and seminars relating to farming and entrepreneurial skills. Interaction between agriculture experts at the upcoming school, students, and small holder farmers will form a diverse and constructive community of practice. The establishment presumes the interconnection of environmental and economic sustainability, an obvious reality in a community where economic activity is dominated by natural-resource-dependent agriculture.

Community Secondary School

In response to the limited, subservient schedule that the majority of girls and women in our area adhere to on a daily basis, MAVUNO commenced the construction of an all-girls boarding school at the secondary level in the village of Chonyonyo. Our goal is to create a foundation for more opportunities and improved lifestyles for the females in our area who contribute so much to the sustenance of our way of life. Without their commitment and hard work, our communities would not sustain, and without the nurtured progress of this demographic, societal progress is stagnant. The promotion of gender equality is assumed to be intrinsic to the success of any initiative that addresses poverty. In the words of former UN-General Secretary Kofi Annan:
"Study after study has taught us there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women".

In order to understand the ways in which the students will benefit, it is important to know the barriers that prevent able female students from participating in secondary school. Traditional gender roles distract from girls' ability to focus on academic pursuits. Girls are called on to perform domestic duties such as fetching water, cooking, and caring for younger siblings. These activities take time away from both school attendance and studying. That female academic performance is affected by this domestic workload is indicated by their consistently lower average on national exams at all education levels. Additionally, early marriage and pregnancy prevent girls from finishing school. 1 in 4 Tanzanian women has her first child before the age of 18, and girls who get pregnant are expelled from school. Girls are also disproportionately affected by health issues and HIV/AIDS. Unprotected sexual practices imply high vulnerability of girls to HIV infection (rates of infection are six times higher for girls than for boys). Moreover, girls are relied on when HIV/AIDS-related complications prevent parents from acting as caregivers; this further detracts from regular school attendance.

These phenomena outlined above collectively contribute to a destructive cycle wherein women are alienated from power structures by their lack of education, thus reinforcing the gender roles that make education more difficult. Many uneducated rural women are completely unaware of their legal and human rights, and disempowered to advocate for their interests or social protection at even the household level.
Therefore, by creating a nurturing educational environment for young women, the Center will cultivate cohorts of young women who can in turn educate their neighbors and other community members about women's rights and who will have the communication skills and sophistication needed to negotiate social services for themselves and their communities. Girls at boarding school are safer from assault and HIV infection, and girls engaged in school are less likely to marry and have children early, thereby reducing their domestic responsibility and freeing them to pursue further educational or economic activities.

HIV/AIDS Project

The background of the MAVUNO HIV project is to form a local coalition for the empowerment of people living with HIV/AIDS.
The goal of the project is to allow for these men and women to help one another become more equipped to navigate a community plagued by stigmatization.

One group consists of 10 people who are working together to overcome the discrimination and disadvantages that accompany this diagnosis.
The purpose of this group is to create a supportive space that provides relief and stages a forum to discuss team activities that will allow members to improve their health and enhance household incomes.
Members meet twice a month to discuss ideas about how to work through and overcome illness, financial strain, social barriers, and other disease-related concerns.

In partnership with MAVUNO's Agriculture and Environmental Conservation program, members have been given fresh, organic vegetables and high quality seeds to grow their own produce for the following season. Additionally, chicken raised on MAVUNO property have been distributed to all participants in order to increase nutritional status and to create an opportunity for enhancing family income. With the help of MAVUNO staff and volunteers, members have benefitted from various educational seminars that have increased their knowledge base concerning sustainable agricultural practices, proper medication usage, and safe sexual practices.

Biogas program

Traditionally in Tanzania one cooks in open fire places with wood or charcoal. Cutting and collecting trees and bushes for cooking or to sale it as firewood or as charcoal led to the fact that a large part of the forest surfaces of Tanzania are already cleared. This has the consequence that more woods are being cut than able to regenerate. The effects are deforestation and therefore desertification, since by substantial clearing not only the soil quality does worsen strongly. A large part of the precipitation flows off unused due to the increasing ground erosion. Since forests are multi-functional it endangeres not only the direct habitat but the global ecological system. In Tanzania humans live to a large extent directly or indirectly on the agriculture. Particularly for this subpopulation the stated changes of the ground fertility and its quality have serious consequences. The harvesting results - the basic cover of the nutrition - is endangered. The Biogas program will be offering solutions.

The use of biogas can work against the described development of deforestation. By the use of biogas for cooking the cutting and collecting of fire wood becomes redundant. This particularly benefits the women and children, since no longer far walks for the procurement of fuel must be done. Under health aspects the use of biogas leads to the avoidance of infections of the respiratory system and of inflammations of the eyes, which result from the strong smoke development with the traditional firing. Beside this the quality of life of the population is crucially improved by the usage of gas lamps, since so the possibility is created of using the time also after nightfall meaningfully. Furthermore the use of the restsubstrate improves the ground fertility as fertilizer and therefore the harvesting results in the agriculture. The use of biogas will contribute to support the national economy of a region as resources are substituted and nutrients are optimally used.Target group of this project is the rural population especially women and children

Mavuno Microfinance Program

The Microfinance Program was initiated in 1996 assisting individual members. The program expanded in 2006 and switched to a group-based model. Currently 54 groups are involved. Mavuno’s Microfinance Project works with groups in the rural villages of Ihanda, Bugene, Rukole, Chonyonyo, and Mabira. Groups are self-selected, meaning the participants identify one another as people they trust to maintain good standing in Microfinance Program. Membership in a group requires sponsorship as well as approval from the group. A group applies to Mavuno, who then carries out a six month evaluation process before accepting them into the Microfinance Program. To be a part of Microfinance Program, groups must:
- Have at least five members.
- Maintain their own bank account made up of regular (monthly) member contributions, to serve as a general fund from which internal group loans are made.
- Meet monthly and record minutes including information about contributions, loan solicitations, member applications, etc. At monthly meetings decisions are made about particular loan application approval.
- Share monthly meeting notes with Mavuno.
- Elect a chairperson to serve as chief representative at Mavuno microfinance functions.
Once approved as a group, the group is responsible for guaranteeing loans made from Mavuno to group members. Groups approve each application, endorsing the purpose as well as the amount of the loan. There is no limit to the number of loans that may be extended to members of a group at a given time.
Groups are provided with an explanation about how to maintain accurate and appropriate records, advice about how to make good approval decisions, and other support as needed from Mavuno. Mavuno visits each group regularly to solicit feedback on the process and to review the group’s operations.Most members are women, and most members have families.