Giving Tuesday: Feeding Hungry Stomachs and Minds

“The greatest impact of Covid-19,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stated, “may not be on those whom the virus directly infects, but on those shattered by the collapse of economies and health and education systems in developing countries.”

Playing its own small part this Giving Season, The Toa Nafasi Project is seeking to support our special needs students affected by the pandemic through two significant interventions: 1) Learning and Testing, and 2) Health and Hunger.

Schools in Tanzania were closed for 3½ months this year, and we worried as research has demonstrated that disruptions in school continuity can cause long-term harm to educational achievement. When classes resumed, we picked up our regular assessment and evaluation practices, but also recognized the need to upgrade them.

In 2021, The Toa Nafasi Project plans to shift from our current manual processes to a faster and more accurate automated framework and also to refine our methodologies to track key demographics such as family income, students’ household formation (single-headed, grandparents, etc.); distance between home and school; and other important indicators. The planned upgrade will help us to provide better services to our vulnerable young beneficiaries and their families.

The pandemic also took its toll on the economy in Kilimanjaro, a region in Tanzania which is heavily dependent on tourism. Loss of jobs means loss of income leading to the inability to pay for basic needs, those of our student population being negatively impacted, special needs and other vulnerable children the most. Parents now lack the resources to take their children to clinics even for regular childhood illnesses or provide the proper nutritional meals they need. Within the home, children are at greater risk of isolation and neglect, verbal abuse and physical violence.

The Toa Nafasi Project already has a robust medical and psychosocial referral network to attend to these students but, due to the repercussions of the pandemic, it is no longer sufficient. To this end, we plan to expand our medical and social-emotional referral program as well as raise seed money (quite literally!) to start a food support initiative of a shamba or plot at each participating public school site so students may engage in growing their own food.

In this way, our #GivingTuesday 2020 will address both the hungry stomachs and stunted growth as well as the hungry brains and stunted minds that the pandemic has left in its wake.