Local Nonprofit Establishes Scholarship Fund For Child Brides In Tanzania
A North Falmouth couple’s recent donation to a local nonprofit has helped establish a scholarship fund for young Maasai girls who are routinely sold as child brides in Tanzania.
Donna and Peter Sawyer initially got involved with EfforTZ, a volunteer nonprofit based in East Falmouth, about four years ago after Ms. Sawyer ran into the foundation’s vice president, Sheryl Seyfert, at a local nail salon. The two women got to chatting and once Ms. Sawyer heard about the foundation’s work in Tanzania, she knew she and her husband had to help.
“When I found out this was happening, I was horrified,” Ms. Sawyer said. “We are so blessed in this country. I had no idea until I talked to Sheryl that children were living this kind of life, sleeping in dung huts, no plumbing, walking miles for water, and being sold into marriage, which is really just slavery.”
In Tanzania, young Maasai girls are often sold as child brides shortly after they complete their elementary education, between the ages of 12 and 14. Thousands of Maasai girls are sold each year by their fathers, often to much older men who already have multiple wives, in exchange for livestock—which is a measure of wealth within the village—and alcohol.
EfforTZ was founded in 2010, after Ms. Seyfert connected with a distant relative on her husband’s side. Mary Dupont of Martha’s Vineyard was telling Ms. Seyfert about her daughter, who was building an orphanage in Tanzania at the time. The two women were looking at photos of the village where Ms. Dupont’s daughter was and ultimately decided to get involved with the foundation that was building the orphanage.
“We just fell in love with the kids,” Ms. Seyfert said. “They were just gorgeous and smiling, despite their circumstances.”
After some time volunteering on that organization’s board, Ms. Seyfert said, she and Ms. Dupont discovered the plight of the Maasai girls in the village. The two quickly decided that something had to be done, and soon enough, EfforTZ was born.
The main mission of EfforTZ is to provide education for the boys and girls in the Tanzanian village that they work with. EfforTZ has enlisted people from all across America to volunteer and also employs native Tanzanians, including a Maasai man whose father is a village elder, to work with them. While staffing in the United States is all volunteer-based, EfforTZ team members in Tanzania are paid employees.
Though their mission encompasses all children in Tanzania, EfforTZ places a special focus on helping Maasai girls gain control over their future. The foundation uses donations to provide them with scholarships to private boarding schools before they can be married off, offering them an education that they otherwise would never have access to.
The girls generally come from a place where there is no drinking water for miles and the huts, hand-built by the women, are plastered with a mixture of sand and dung. But at these schools, they learn to read and write, are given medical care, taught about the importance of hygiene, get life skills training and receive an education that will prepare them for a future of their own choosing.
“For the first time in their lives they sleep in real beds instead of ones made of twigs and skins,” Ms. Seyfert said. “They take their first showers, learn to brush their teeth and discover a world they never knew existed.”
The decision to get these girls out of their village and send them to boarding schools was intentional; Ms. Seyfert said that while Tanzania now has a law banning the selling of child brides, the villages are so remote that they are mostly out of the scope of local law enforcement and face almost no consequences for breaking these laws.
“We worked at changing attitudes,” Ms. Seyfert said. “We work with one village in particular right now, and we go in there and find out who’s about to be married off. We get them a scholarship, we talk to the parents, we talk to the village elders, and we send them to a boarding school.”
As stated on its website, EfforTZ has provided more than 520 scholarships to date and provided school supplies and textbooks to more than 33,000 children in public schools. It has also made repairs to rundown school buildings and established six school libraries.
Recently, a generous donation from the Sawyer family has allowed the foundation to create a new scholarship fund that is set to sponsor 10 girls each year for the next four years, providing each girl with a full scholarship to a public boarding school.
“I had a very good year in real estate last year and I wanted to do something special, so my husband and I decided to give some money,” Ms. Sawyer said. “I hope for every girl in the village to get an education, so she can make an educated decision on her future. Not only will it help the girls, but it’ll help their children because if you educate one child, they’re going to make sure their kids are also educated. They’ll have a better life.”
In addition to helping start the scholarship fund, the Sawyers sponsor four Maasai girls. The EfforTZ website explains that a sponsorship commitment is usually five to nine years, costing $1,200 each year for a full scholarship. In return, sponsors get to learn the history of the girl they sponsor, receive a photograph of her and get letters updating them on her education journey.
The girls must work hard at boarding school, Ms. Seyfert said. In the village, they speak a local dialect called Maa. In order to be admitted to most schools, girls must also learn to speak Swahili—the national language—and English. Fluency is not necessarily a requirement for all schools but without a basic understanding of these languages, the girls may struggle with their lessons and could quickly fall behind.
“It’s a lot of work but it’s worthwhile,” Ms. Seyfert said. “These girls are so appreciative of everything that is done for them. Its just amazing, the letters they write. The letters telling us about before we took them on, their living conditions…it’s heartbreaking. But we do what we can do and with people like Donna and Peter, we’re able to do more. And we do have a lot of wonderful donors. Donna and Peter kind of stand out, but any donation we get helps us to help these kids.”