Recent Highlights
2026 HIGHLIGHTS
Stranded in Amsterdam for 3 days on my recent way home from Tanzania, I wanted to quickly share why your support of EdPowerment is just as important today as when we began in 2010.
THIS IS HOW YOUR INVESTMENT IN EDPOWERMENT IS WORKING TODAY:
EBIC (EdPowerment Business Incubation Center) is now home to 18 apprentices, 7 paid interns contributing to the Center’s income, and comprehensive IT training, access and services unavailable for miles – all led by a dedicated staff of 10 educators and skilled craftsmen/women.
I witnessed such engaged activity as young adults learned how to build furniture; cook and sell all kinds of local snacks in demand; make reusable feminine pads for our school outreach program, while learning broader tailoring skills - and strategically market these products. At the same time, I observed all types of individuals figuring out how to use today’s digital world to their advantage.
This is opportunity.
Every motivated individual (young or older) who comes to the Center can radically change his or her future.
A side note: While at the Schiphol Airport CitizenM, I observed dozens of businesspeople from all parts of the world collaborating on diverse enterprises. Meanwhile, in Tanzania’s poor rural areas many students still don’t even have pencils and notebooks. Most have never touched a computer.
The need for and value of EdPowerment’s work could not be clearer.
Cookery: Our interns prepare many orders now coming in from local outlets using the Center’s new industrial oven and mixer. Cost = $1,725/$588. Our snacks taste the best!
Carpentry: Apprentices and Interns share new designs and techniques, distinguishing the Center’s products from the competition.
Computers: New HP computers and personal instruction separate the Center’s classes from those at any other school or business in the area.
ELINAMI
… represents the wide net of our sponsorship program. Growing up in unspeakable poverty and abuse, she was brought to EdPowerment years ago, enrolled at the KIWOCE Open School (operationally funded by EdPowerment), and after gaining her O level secondary school certificate, sent to a vocational school for hairdressing. Braiding and hairstyling is extremely popular in local society. After completing this program, she joined a salon and thrived. However, turbulent 2025 elections in Tanzania resulted in her employer closing the salon. Elinami has since served customers out of her rented room.
During my visit, our local staff worked with Elinami to calculate the costs of setting up her own business. This is EdPowerment’s singular methodology: to walk with each student – whether he or she becomes a doctor or hair stylist – for the best possible outcome. With our seed money and coaching, Elinami can continue to build a sustainable livelihood. Cost for the first stage of investment = $1020.
Pictured above: Elinami (right) and Gladness, a young Massai woman who escaped marriage threats at home and is now earning a Certificate in Clinical Medicine, works through requirements for Elinami’s hairdressing business. Joyce, our Finance Manager and recent CPA graduate, will review further.
ONE PRINTER
Five years ago, local authorities built the Namayani Primary School to serve a scattered, remote population consisting primarily of Maasai families. (Maasai society remains dominated by men who take on multiple wives to procreate, while providing little in the way of support). EdPowerment learned of the school through several students in our school-based malnutrition prevention program.
Namayani now serves roughly 500 students with 7 paid teachers and 3 volunteer teachers. No books, classroom teaching tools, internet: just a newer building, some desks (shared by 2 to 3 students) and a few hard-working educators.
Each month the headmaster, Joseph (a remarkably personable and positive human being), takes multiple trips into a town about 10 miles away to print required level tests. 500 students @ 7 subjects Tsh * 400 Tsh for a two-page test * 8 times a year = 11,200,000 Tsh or $4,392 annual cost. Government support is minimal. Families have no resources. So there are no additional learning handouts.
We recognized that the most significant way that EdPowerment could help the teachers and students immediately was to provide a printer.
The day I left, we purchased a high volume black and white printer. Yesterday our team delivered it, with some other learning assists. Cost = $550. This is the thoughtful, intentional aid that EdPowerment delivers.
TUMSIFU
EdPowerment’s Saturday Boys and Girls Club has given local teens such an important outlet. It is their only way to gather and enjoy recreation, arts and some practical learning. But is there a lasting impact?
Last week, we revisited two of these students whom we learned had applied some basic electrical, building and other lessons at home. We found that since graduation, Tumsifu had built two sheds for his home’s sanitary and agricultural use – and set up an ingenious system for an outdoor speaker using wires and other materials found in garbage dumps. (pictured above) This is the motivated individual that EdPowerment embraces.
Tumsifu will become our newest sponsored student: taking a 3-year VETA (vocational) course in Domestic and Industrial Electrical Installation. Cost = $150 in start-up supplies and $450/yr in school fees. With this diploma, he will be able to earn a good income that changes his life and that of his mother and siblings.
THESE STORIES DEMONSTRATE THE TANGIBLE WAYS WE USE YOUR DONATIONS - AND HOW MUCH EVERY DOLLAR MEANS!
The youth population is exploding in countries such as Tanzania. A recent article in The East African stated that at least 1/3 of Tanzania’s working youth are extremely poor, roughly 70 percent moderately poor. Formal jobs constitute only 5% of new jobs in Tanzania, while an estimated 92% of the East African region’s youth currently work in the informal sector. In this environment every young person that we empower with serviceable, problem-solving skills achieves a victory.
EdPowerment creates family. We all help each other. Here, Gladness, our sponsored student, talks to Maasai students at Msitu Wa Tembo, the government secondary school where we conduct academic skills training. Many families in this culture still oppose education, seeking instead to marry daughters at an early age. While our staff tries to change attitudes, the best way to reach these girls is through one of their own, in this case, Gladness. May her example and words inspire many more young women to fulfill their potential.
NO MORE CHALK TALK:
EdPowerment’s seminars bring the classroom alive
Our Reusable Pad Program includes boys in health seminars on the female reproductive system.
We teach HOW to learn as well as content. Students become a part of the process.