Take a community in the Mikese area of the Morogoro region or example. This community is home to the Maasai people, a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania.
As with any group, the Masaai people have unique traditions, customs, and gender roles. In most Masaai communities, for example, women traditionally spend most of their time caring for their homes and ensuring their families have enough food, water, and shelter for everyone. Men traditionally have a role that is more outside the home, as they are responsible for taking care of livestock. As a result, women are typically not very involved in livelihood decisions.
The Masaai also sometimes experience tensions between people with different livelihoods. Livestock herders and farmers often come into conflict with each other because both groups struggle to respect each other’s property. Herders sometimes let their livestock trample crops belonging to the farmers. Farmers, on the other hand, have a reputation for their rough, sometimes abusive treatment of livestock.
In Mikese, World Renew works in partnership with the Eastern Diocese of the Mennonite Church through an organization called Jamii Enterprise Initiative (JEI) to help communities work together with greater harmony and build healthier, more fruitful lives as a result. Recently JEI held workshops in the community to help the residents start to work together to use their God-given resources and skills to build better lives.
“People learned about the benefits of working together and intensively trained on saving money together and taking loans to start small businesses or to do more of what they already were involved in,” explains Margaret Njuguna, World Renew’s Country Director in Tanzania.
“Poverty has no race, tribe, or religion – we reach out to all with the love of Christ.”
In order for the livelihood training to be effectively passed along to others in the community, staff members trained community members and equipped them to train to others.
“Like many other communities I have trained, the people in Mikese nicknamed me ‘The Key,’” says Njuguna. “In such communities, my first statement in training is that I would prove to them that they were not poor, and that I held the key that unlocks poverty. That key is training, mentoring, and encouraging them as they gradually start working together and learning new skills.”
One of the eight community groups in this area just reached their first year of working together, and they invited Njuguna to their celebration meeting, during which they divided among themselves the interest they had earned from loans they gave each other through the year.
The group of 29 people shared out an equivalent of $382 USD; they also had an equivalent of $500 USD in their group welfare account and were currently sharing $3,125 USD as loans amongst the members.
“My question to them was: ‘Did we give you any money?’” says Njuguna. “And their response was a big ‘No!’” Then I asked them what we did and in a chorus they said, ‘the key!’”
Through their participation in the savings group, men and women learned to value and include each other as they never had before. It is a huge step for Maasai men to allow their wives to join in business and livelihood endeavors. Now wives and husbands can celebrate their successes together. Farmers and herders are also working together and living together with greater harmony.
In addition to improving the unity of these relationships, village Savings and Loan groups are promoting better relationships between those of different religions. For example, although the local Mennonite Church houses this VSL project, about half of the project participants are Muslim.
Njuguna says, “When we get to the communities, our motto is this: “Poverty has no race, tribe, or religion – we reach out to all with the love of Christ.” These communities have become living witnesses to the unifying power of Jesus and love of His church.
Physical resources such as livestock, crops, and land are of course a vital part of sustainable transformation. As this community proves, however, relationship building is the most foundationally valuable ‘resource’ God has given his children in the fight against poverty.
We praise God for ‘unlocking’ lives and reconciling relationships in Tanzania through World Renew!