Tuleeni Children Home

ive is encouraging, give hope, care, and create a better future for the children who lost their parents. We believe in the caring of not only those who don’t have parents but also the very needy ones who for one reason or another have missed care of their parents. In Tanzania, there are approximately 4 million children under 14 who are not appropriately cared for (the country has a total population of over 50 million people). A big part of these children are orphans, many of which have lost their parents or left helpless due to poverty. Even if the children still have both parents, they often left their homes because of extreme poverty of the parents or domestic violence, which is often caused by the parents’ alcoholism or drug abuse, or because of being victims of witchcraft. Many of these children live on the streets, trying to make a living by begging, stealing, and doing other bad behavior activities. These children can be seen wearing tattered cloth, walking alone or in small groups through the streets of cities, sleeping in house entrances or primitive self-made shelters. Other children who don’t have a family don’t actually live on the streets, but with relatives or host families, having to stand behind the host families’ own children in terms of nutrition, accommodation, and education. Whereas boys usually prefer to live on the streets, staying with other families is the typical option for girls. At their host families, they are often abused as “working slaves” or find themselves in the lowest position in society, often being the target of physical violence, humiliation, and sexual abuse. Most children never have the opportunity to see the inside of a school building at all. We spend more than $26,000 a year to send children to school! Despite having small projects help running the orphanage still we rely heavily on international donors and well-wishers. Currently, we have over 54 children living at the orphanage. There are many children who only live at the orphanage seasonally, as they are in private boarding schools (funded by international sponsors) or away at college and University. In addition to all of the kids that live at the orphanage, there are other children that live somewhere else, similar to a foster placement, with extended families that we support financially!