Description
The Upendo face is a daycare center hosting over 50 children every day, located in the Machumba area of Arusha, Tanzania. The children come from all over the country; some of them come from very poor families while others have no family at all. The center offers them a place to call home: a place where they can play, receive the attention and affection they need, learn basic english and math and ideally get a full meal.
Origins
This project started as a small idea, when Godfrey Izaac Kivuyo realized his concern for small children with nowhere to go.
Godfrey is an orphan from Moshi. At 12, having never received any education and lacking future prospects, he decided to move to Arusha, the second biggest city of Tanzania, by himself, hoping for a better life.
He found his way to Machumba, where he met Matoyo, a local farmer who offered him a shelter and food in exchange of his labour in the field.
A few years later, having grown into a young man, Godfrey decided to help the orphans around him. He took up many small, low paid, thankless jobs and worked very hard in order to rent a room somewhere in Arusha where he hosted dozens of children every day. He took care of them and taught them what he could.
But rent was expensive and Godfrey could not manage to go on for much longer. When Matoyo learned about this, he offered his adoptive son a part of his land to build a centre: and that is how Upendo face came into the world.
Present situation
Since 2014 this center consists in four classrooms, one office, one kitchen and a playground and receives over 50 orphans every day from the entire city. In spite of this equipment the orphans are still in a preacarious and vulnerable situation. Some of the children live far away and have to walk a few kilometers to come to the center and to go back home. As for the others, local families are giving them a shelter but they still live in very poor conditions and more often than not the families cannot take care of them properly.
Our project
Having been increadibly successful with his plan so far, Godfrey would like to complete the Upendo face with a dormitory, providing a safe shelter, full time care and ensuring the children have enough to eat everyday.
Expanding the daycare center to a full time orphanage will benefit the children and the center as a whole:
For the children it will:
For the center it will:
Cost
All funds raised will proceed to the construction of the dormitories:
A word from the Team
After spending a month at the orphanage getting to know the children and realising the hardship they live in, our team of volunteers, touched by Godfrey’s investment, decided to give him a hand. The most urgent thing to do seemed obvious to us: offering the children a more stable, serene life, where their well being would be the priority. Building a dormitory is then our unique solution.
We are calling on you today to help us give the orphans of Upendo Face the peaceful and sweet nightsleep they deserve.
Be the sandman they need.
THANK YOU
All the team wish you the best!
My name is Vincent Marc and I am a fourth year engineering student at ICAM. During my studies, i’ve had many opportunities to engage myself in international humanitarian projects, and each time i’ve given myself to the fullest, showing interest and motivation. It is through one of these projects that i became president of the humanitarian association Sindhu in 2014, which supports an orphanage in India. With Sindhu, i have organised, and been successful with, a campaign to fund the orphanage’s medical supplies. Following this experience i’ve decided to build a new project, this time in africa. After a month in the centre of Upendo Face, its needs revealed themselves to me: the biggest one, without doubt, being to offer a permanent shelter for the orphans. This project, although it has just launched, already matters a lot to me, and I hope your help will bring it to success.