Last quarter was a busy time of transition for World Renew Tanzania. At the end of December, we said farewell to our country director, Margaret Njuguna, who has worked with World Renew for 30 years (19 of them in Tanzania). Margaret is moving back home to Kenya to start a center for disabled children. We wish her all of God’s blessings as she begins this new chapter in her life.

At the end of December, we said farewell to our country director, Margaret Njuguna, who has worked with World Renew for 30 years (19 of them in Tanzania). Margaret is moving back home to Kenya to start a center for disabled children. We wish her all of God’s blessings as she begins this new chapter in her life.

We are happy to welcome our new country director, Jim Zylstra and his wife Josephine who came in January of this year. 

In October we also welcomed Phil and Jannetta Vandenberg, a volunteer couple from Toronto, Canada, who have moved to Mwanza to help World Renew and our partner organization, the Africa Inland Church of Tanzania (AICT).

Jannetta is working with AICT’s medical clinic, and Phil is using his agricultural engineering expertise to help with AICT and World Renew projects. They have already found many valuable ways to help improve our programs, and we are so happy to have them part of our team. You can follow their adventures through their blog HERE. 

Remembering Joseph

Since early last year, we have been introducing you to one of our partner staff in each newsletter. For this edition, I had planned on profiling one of the most long-term and involved members of our World Renew Tanzania team, Joseph Shigulu, the program coordinator for the Sengerema Informal Sector Association (SISA) whose work you read about in the story on the previous page and in many previous newsletters and articles in The Banner.

On November 30, Joseph was robbed and killed while driving home from work on his motorcycle. His sudden death came as a shock to his family, to everyone in his community, and to all of us at World Renew who saw him as a man who was loved by everyone. Joseph was doing so much to help his community, had such a passion for serving God, and seemed to be at the peak of his effectiveness. This was probably the hardest news we have ever received in our country program, and World Renew and all of our partners are still in shock about this tragic loss.

This profile is therefore a tribute to the life and work of Joseph Shigulu, one of the most dedicated and friendly Tanzanians I have ever met.

In 1996, Joseph Shigulu was working in a small workshop outside the Catholic church in Sengerema, making equipment for hospitals and farmers. World Renew was partnering with the Lutheran church at the time, supporting men and women who were trying to run small businesses.

As part of this work, World Renew was providing entrepreneurial training and helping struggling business owners form savings groups to raise capital together. Joseph joined one of those groups and right away his leadership skills were noticed. Margaret Njuguna and World Renew sent him to Kenya to learn from some entrepreneurs there who were recycling waste material into usable products (like kitchen knives or toys) that could be sold in the market.

Joseph came back from that trip and immediately started to train people with no income how to do the same thing. He helped them form into a group to start a business. This first initiative was then followed with other learning tours to bring back ideas for strengthening small businesses in Sengerema. 

 Joseph was doing so much to help his community, had such a passion for serving God, and seemed to be at the peak of his effectiveness

In 1999, World Renew was collaborating with Partners for Christian Development (PCD), now Partners Worldwide, to support entrepreneurs in Tanzania. Doug Seebeck, PCD’s director, and two of his American partners (Aud Shaap and Rod Huisken) met Joseph in the village during one of their project visits in east Africa.

When these men met Joseph, they said, “Now there is an entrepreneur!" The meeting inspired these partners to build a partnership around Joseph and his vision. The following year, they sent Joseph to Kenya to visit an organization that provides savings and credit support to entrepreneurs. Joseph’s response was, "Ah, now I get it. I am going to go and organize a similar thing in Sengerema."

Six months later, he had formed the Sengerema Informal Sector Association (SISA), an association of more than 30 groups of men and women entrepreneurs.

These groups of carpenters, metal workers, and tailors worked in dilapidated workshops or along the side of the road, so PCD was inspired to build a big center for 20 groups to have a good place to build their products, and for other groups to display and advertise their products. Joseph became one of the leaders on the center’s managing board, and World Renew advised them.

The project was warmly welcomed and supported by the local government as a good way to strengthen the community. That entrepreneurship center, under the management of SISA’s board members, is still going strong today, 13 years later, and is being used by carpenters, metalworkers, and some technical training schools.

Since that time, World Renew has worked with SISA to support these groups and to build up the work of farmers and entrepreneurs in Sengerema, with Joseph as the program coordinator and leader. During that time, Joseph’s leadership and teaching skills kept growing as he got more involved in showing those around him ways to improve their businesses and their lives.

In 2010, Joseph had a vision to really address the poverty and weak agricultural practices in the area through the partnership between SISA and World Renew. For three years, SISA used a Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security (SAFS) grant from World Renew to train farmers all across Sengerema about getting the land titles for their farms and using better agricultural practices to improve their crops and income. This included food processing, introducing new crops like sunflower and sweet potato, and teaching collective marketing skills.

The project was more successful than Joseph and I ever dreamed possible. It mostly stemmed from Joseph’s passion for helping improve farmers’ lives and his charisma in working with farmers and government leaders.

Here are some of the results that he achieved…

• More than 5,000 farmers from 32 villages (including 2,000 women) attended land rights training. Fifteen-hundred of these farmers were trained in improved agricultural practices and have begun implementing what they learned. All of the participants reported an increase in food security, with many doubling or even quadrupling their harvests. 
   
• All 126 villages in the district have been surveyed and have received their land titles, and almost 4,000 farmers (including 1,500 women) have filed applications to get their land surveyed to get their titles. Seventy-six farmers have received their titles (including 26 women), and the rest are at various stages of the process.
   
• SISA is producing a weekly radio program to broadcast information to farmers in Sengerema and much of northern Tanzania about the land rights acquisition process and improved agricultural practices. 
   
• The district MP has taken the issue of land titles to parliament to push for more government backing and less waiting time through decentralizing of the land-title process.
   
• Joseph was also chosen to manage a newly-constructed Business Development Training Center for entrepreneurs in Sengerema that was built with funding from the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). 

The success of the program led to new funding from FRB in 2013 for a two-year extension and expansion of the project to more communities across Sengerema. We had just finished the first quarter of the project when Joseph died. Other members from SISA will step in and collectively try and carry the mantle that was dropped by Joseph, but he is a very difficult man to replace.

The two things that I remember the most about Joseph was his enthusiasm for being taught how to do new things or improve the things he was doing, and his eagerness to give advice to help anyone he met.

If you would like to send any messages of support and encouragement to the family, please contact me at [email protected].

Prayer Requests

• Pray for Margaret as she transitions into her new life in Kenya.
• Pray for Jim and Josephine as they settle into their new roles in Tanzania.
• Pray for Joseph’s family and the work SISA is doing in Sengerema.

Chris Enns

Program Consultant
World Renew Tanzania