Hi there. My name is Mandy Stein, and I am the Founder and Executive Director of Neema International. Over the years, Neema International has seen extreme growth and has achieved unimaginable success— From its humble beginnings in 2011, to sponsoring only 4 children in 2013, to now having supported well over 300 kids from infancy to university AND having a staff of 60 incredible Tanzanian men and women working alongside of me everyday.... SO many lives have been empowered and changed for the better. This year for Giving Tuesday, we are fundraising for two programs at Neema. First is our University Student Sponsorship Fund and the second is Neema International’s Mental Health Initiative that we will launch in January 2024. There is A LOT of info below, so please bear with me and try to read it all! :)
*** The video above does show some of the harsh realities that our students and the community around us deals with on a daily basis. The purpose of this video is to show the truth about where Neema began and how far it has come. Please know that this video is not representative of all of Africa or even all of Tanzania, and while they face hardships, these people are resilient, strong, and have so much to be proud of. Thank you.
Neema’s University Student Fund:
Currently, more than 80% of our kids who are in preschool, primary and secondary level have consistent sponsors which make the work we do here very effective… Unfortunately, we have been much less successful in finding and retaining sponsors for our students as they get older… sometimes it is because it is a larger financial contribution… and other times, it’s because the student didn’t join Neema until he or she was already in middle school or high school and many people want to sponsor a young child.
While it's understandable that many people prefer to start sponsoring a child from a young age so that they can witness their growth and foster a strong connection, our older kids are also an integral part of Neema and they play a huge rule in their country’s future. We have 15 students in tertiary education (which includes 11th and 12th grade as well as vocational training colleges and university) who do not have sponsors. We have been using our slush fund money to cover these students, but having lost some sponsors for younger kids this month as well, the slush fund will not be enough. These 12 students need between $2,000 to $4,000 each, every year at their respective schools. We are hoping to raise $20,000 to combine with the slush money we do have so that we can keep them all in school for the 2024 school year, which for us begins in January. Despite challenging backgrounds, they've demonstrated exceptional resilience and we want to see each of them become successful and productive members of society. Most of these kids have no other support system besides Neema, and they are counting on us to help them reach their dreams. Please watch the video to see where many of these kids started and where they are today!!!
Neema International’s Mental Health Initiative:
For those who don’t know this about me, I was diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety in the 1st grade and to this day, my mother still sends my medication to Tanzania for me MONTHLY as I cannot get it here. As a child, I didn’t want people to know that I took medicine or had to go see a psychiatrist to get help. I felt ashamed and to this day, I often look back and wonder what my life would have been like without my medicine… and even with my medicine I was (and still am) a mess and a lot to handle!! I literally thank my lucky stars everyday to have been born to parents who believed that I was more than my diagnosis and who were willing to get me the help that I needed so that I could reach my full potential. Without my medication and the endless love and support I was given, the Mandy that exists today would have been such a far off pipe dream. Because someone helped me and believed in me, I am able to help and believe in others.
Neema International’s theory of change is built around the five components of nurturing care for early childhood, which as defined by the World Health Organization include good health, adequate nutrition, safety and security, responsive caregiving, and opportunities for education and learning. While we are working very hard to implement this at our Uru Community Pre and Primary School (UCPAPS), there are huge holes in the curriculum and in our approach and outreach interventions that need to be modified in order for us to truly be successful in raising strong, confident, and healthy children. But even with these identified shortcomings, these students are light years ahead (both socially and emotionally) of our older students who didn’t have the opportunity to attend UCPAPS and have mounds of unresolved trauma and PTSD from rough starts to life. While it is normal to see behavioral changes in teenagers, what many of our high school students are demonstrating goes much deeper… it is becoming more and more clear the amount of damage that their past has done to their overall character, emotional stability, and even to their academic career..
In 2018, I attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Education where I studied the effects of poverty on the developing brain, focusing heavily on toxic stress, executive function and prevention and intervention. While mental health has gained huge amounts of traction in many Western countries, it receives little to no attention in most developing countries where it is a struggle for people to meet even their most basic needs.
As an organization that works directly with children who come from extremely impoverished and vulnerable backgrounds, we know that mental health is a crucial piece of the puzzle and that our students will not be able to reach their full potential if we do not address the tremendous trauma so many of them have experienced. The only reason we have sat on our hands for many years is because there is SUCH a lack of resources and so few mental health professionals in the country. It is truly very hard to know where to even begin.
After meeting with the Baylor College of Medicine (which has a large presence here in Tanzania), and talking with both Western and Tanzanian psychiatrists, counselors and therapists (I know a total of three, only) I have begun outlining a very large, expensive, multi-step treatment plan for some of our most in need students-- but this needs large grants that I will focus on in the new year. In the meantime, there are some smaller programs that my team and I have been able to piece together that are much more affordable and can be implemented at UCPAPS as early as January 2024! Like I said, this will be a very very long road and it will be expensive and very challenging, but we are ready to do whatever is necessary to help these children reach their full potential…
Without going into extreme detail as this has already been a very very long post, here are short descriptions of the initial steps we will be taking in January.
1. Nairobi, Kenya is a six hour drive from Moshi and is home to some of the best medical services in sub-Saharan Africa. Tanzanian citizens can travel to Kenya without a visa and a bus ticket is only about $20 per person. There are currently 5-10 students who desperately need to be seen by a psychiatrist who can make a diagnosis or create a short term treatment plan for the student. Some services are available here, but they are scarce and the overworked doctors don’t always have time to see a patient through to a diagnosis… so if we can get the diagnosis abroad, we can hopefully handle treatment locally. Part of the money here will go to getting my admin staff and these students their passports so they can begin this process.
2. Neema’s Nest— about 6 years ago, I had an idea for an after school program for the UCPAPS day students who didn’t live in our boarding facility and had basic stability and shelter that they could go home to each night. These children all still have suffered from trauma and definitely do not have everything that our boarding students have, but they are in a position that we can support them while they are in their homes and we can do our best to keep their family together. Neema’s nest would allow the more vulnerable day students to stay after school to have an extra snack and be supervised by specially hired counselors and teachers to do one on one tutoring, social emotional learning/check ins, and therapy once or twice a week. This would be everyday after school for about two hours.
3. We will hire a new teacher who will ONLY teach the social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum that I have purchased— they will have no other responsibilities at UCPAPS except for teaching SEL— the whole school will engage in a group morning meeting for 15 minutes during breakfast each day each class will have an additional once or twice a week SEL session that will last an hour each. We are using the Pathway to Success SEL Curriculum.
4. We will be hiring two additional social workers and two counselors who will come three to four days a week (after school and on weekends) to specifically work with the 50 UCPAPS boarding students. These are the students who need the most help— they live with us because they have no where else to go… they do not have safe homes or guardians who want/are able and willing to care for them. The trauma these kids have experienced is extreme, and while our kids are UNBELIEVABLY RESILIENT without any support, we want to help them feel and be the best they can be.
5. Last but not least, during school holidays, when our middle school and high school students are home from their different boarding schools (there is a total of three months that they are home throughout the year), they will be doing group therapy with licensed social workers and sociologists and working with an organization called Homeopathy for Health in Africa (HHA) that has had wonderful success treating mental health and trauma related disorders. *HHA currently is working with the UCPAPS students every Wednesday and will continue that in the new year as well.
I know this is a ridiculous amount of information, but we want you to know exactly where your money is going… With your donation we hope to keep these kids in school AND get them the mental health help that they deserve. Our humble beginnings have taught us the value and power of unity, and it is because of you and your support that Neema is as strong and successful as it is today. We sincerely hope you will join us in turning these dreams into a reality and making a lasting impact for Uru’s promising youth.
Thank you in advance for your generosity. We wish you and your family a wonderful holiday season! Sending love from Tanzania!!!
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