SCAW Blog: Tanzania, 2025: July 16
Today we visited the school Chanzige and we were greeted by signs all along the school road that were all positive affirmations like “never stop learning as life never stops teaching” and “you are the hero of your own story.” Someone has put a lot of love into this school and it shows. The children were so friendly and loved practicing their English with us.
While handing out the 700 bedkits we noticed that the children were kicking around plastic bottles to play football with. Our generous partners from Super Banco gifted some “footballs” to us so we were happy to gift two of them to this school. After the headmaster showed us his football skills the kids were happily playing with them before we left for the day.
This is my first distribution with SCAW and it has been such a rewarding, enlightening and heartfelt experience, especially because I am able to share it with my mother.
Team Tanzania, 2025
Upendo 🇹🇿 + SCAW 🇨🇦
SCAW Blog: Tanzania, 2025: July 15
Day 2 of distributions was busy with lots of smiling faces eagerly awaiting us. We were set up under a beautiful ancient mango tree. The children waited patiently and sang some songs while we set up.
We began with tying a kanga around each child, took their photos and ushered them to collect their backpacks stuffed with goodies and their mattresses.
There were a lot of high fives and thank yous. Not even some brief rain dampened their smiles.
The volunteers were amazing. It was a busy and gratifying day.
Team Tanzania, 2025
Upendo 🇹🇿 + SCAW 🇨🇦
SCAW Blog: Tanzania, 2025: July 14
Team Tanzania has arrived and are ready to work!
After a gruelling two days of travel, the team of 8 has arrived in Dar es Salaam to begin the journey of enriching the lives of 7000 children in Tanzania with a bedkit from our generous donors.
We’ve had a lot of time to bond and get to know each other as team members travelled from British Columbia to Toronto to Addis Ababa to Dar.
We hit the ground running after a good night’s sleep with a pre-distribution meeting Monday morning at Mama Wandoa’s house. Here we were able to see where all of the bedkit items are made and stored. The mattresses come from the factory every morning. Mama’s team have been hard at work over the past 4 months. This is our 25th year of partnership with Mama Wandoa, her children, her grandchildren and now her great grandchildren along with the exceptional volunteers from Upendo!
Immediately following the pre-distribution meeting we travelled to a school near Mama’s house where we were met by 700 smiling faces of children and their parents.
Stay tuned as we work through the next 10 days handing out 7000 bedkits and proceed with the new sleep project supported by Mama and her team.
Team Tanzania, 2025
Upendo 🇹🇿 + SCAW 🇨🇦
SCAW Blog: Tanzania, 2025: July 13
It’s late Sunday and we’ve just arrived after quite a gruelling couple of days. Lots of waiting and a loooooong flight, but we are all in good spirits and will sleep well tonight. Wendy and Benjamin met us at the airport.
We are meeting at Mama Wandoa’s house at 9:00 Monday morning for a pre-distribution meeting followed by the first distribution.
Team Tanzania, 2025
Upendo 🇹🇿 + SCAW 🇨🇦
SCAW Blog: Tanzania, 2025: July 12
Pre-distribution preparations:
The 3 photos below show the Upendo volunteers who did the packing of the 7000 bedkits. They are all stored safely. The black coloured bedkits are for small children and the blue coloured bedkits are for older children, all carefully labelled for boys and girls.
All 7000 children are waiting eagerly for their new uniforms and a mattress to enable them to have a peaceful night’s sleep. From Monday the 14th to 25th July we will happily tell the children "LALA SALAMA".
At this time, the SCAW Canadian volunteers are on their way to Tanzania. They should be almost half-way through their journey so stay tuned as there will be lots of excitement to write about. Both teams are eager to work together to ensure more children will have a good night’s sleep.
Team Tanzania, 2025
Upendo 🇹🇿 + SCAW 🇨🇦