Please help support the mental health and wellbeing of impoverished and disadvantaged young women in western Tanzania with a monthly donation. Our 3 month pilot project July-October 2024 (funded by the University of Alberta) produced amazing results, but it's now over and we seek monthly contributions to keep this critical project running for two years. We don't want to let these girls down!

Your monthly contribution, however small, helps us to ensure sustainability. We need at least $600 Canadian dollars per month to run the project. This fundraiser is intended to gather enough support for 2 years.

Binti Tucheze aims to use performing arts (music, song, dance, drama) to empower female adolescents and young adults in Kigoma, one of Tanzania’s poorest regions (Pelizzo et al. 2018), supporting their mental health, and helping them to flourish by developing individual self-confidence and social solidarity. In July 2024 seventeen girls joined this performing group, "Binti Tucheze" (Swahili for "Girl let's dance"). They come from impoverished backgrounds, and have faced unimaginable hardship for their entire lives. Like all young people everywhere, they dreamt of financial independence and happiness in life. But all were forced to drop out of school, due to lack of support. Several are orphans or single mothers, and most are malnourished. Their dreams for independence and happiness dashed, their mental health and wellbeing has suffered enormously as a result.

But for the past three months they have gathered twice weekly for an uplifting 3 hour group meeting as members of Binti Tucheze, Swahili for "Girl, let's dance".

Each meeting includes professional training in music and dance, alongside collective creative brainstorming during which the group formulates and rehearses original dramas that tell their own stories through dialogue, song, and dance. Afterwards, we provide them with a good meal, a time also for conversation about their lives, together with our project coordinator, who offers them life guidance and mentorship. These uplifting meetings have turned into the highlight of their weeks, raising their spirits, and giving them a sense of comforting community and extended family they otherwise lack, as well as a forum to express their feelings to each other through the arts. We also provide funding for transportation,

Bint Tucheze project was established by a generous grant from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, which paid for initial setup and three months of expenses. The initial pilot project equipped the group with drums and costumes, clean water, chairs, and a connection to clean water. Seventeen girls enrolled in the program and they love it and each other!

But now this pilot funding has run out.

Monthly costs run around $750 Canadian, including miscellaneous expenses that crop up from time to time (fixing the water line, or repairing drums, or hosting a special event, or making periodic professional videorecordings), but the minimum basic monthly cost is about $600 - $700 Canadian. This sum covers participants' transportation and a hot meal at each meeting, as well as honoraria for the group's trainer and coordinator ($80/month each).

Our present fundraiser is aiming to gather funding to sustain the group for two years while we seek a larger grant to expand to additional sites. Thank you so much for your support. We can't let these girls down!

Your monthly contribution of even just $15 would be greatly appreciated. If we had 40 such contributors we could run the program.

Please browse our website to view the group's activities and meet the members!

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For more details about the project, please read on....

Project partners, centrally the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology (CCE) at the University of Alberta (under the aegis of Music for Global Human Development), Love and Hope International (L&H), a Canadian-Tanzanian NGO, and Edmonton-based Tanzania-born storyteller, dramatist, and author Tololwa Mollel, are collaborating with Kigoma-based project staff, including coordinator Salome Gamason Gadson, as well as music-dance trainer Gabriel S. Ng'osha, and a videographer, to establish, monitor, supervise, mentor and evaluate the project.

In Kigoma, on the northeast shores of Lake Tanganyika, far from the country’s centers of wealth and power, adversely affected by conflicts in neighboring countries (Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda), most Indigenous residents are impoverished and malnourished. As a result of war and poverty, many youth are orphaned, and their own physical health has suffered as a result. Unable to afford school fees, and often responsible for other family members, most have necessarily curtailed their formal education. Some dream of university. But the sad reality is that few have continued past grade 7. Teenage girls are further adversely affected by patriarchy, a combination of factors damaging self-esteem, social connection, and morale, and triggering depression. Many are single mothers. All seek dignity through decent work, the ability to earn a living wage, surrounded by supportive family, and community.

This participatory project aims to improve girls' mental health and future prospects for material and psychological wellness through an arts intervention designed to improve their physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, instilling hope and camaraderie, and imparting new skills fostering a sense of self-confidence and self-esteem.

We have established this new performance ensemble, “Binti Tucheze” (Swahili for “Girls, Let’s Dance”), training its members in traditional Indigenous performance, as a foundation for the creation and presentation of dance dramas created by the teens themselves and narrating their own life stories, empowering them through music, dance, and storytelling.

Notably, girls not only sing, dance, and act, but also drum - an especially significant act of empowerment in Tanzania where, as in so many African societies - drumming is typically off-limits to females. Following a training period of three months--twice-weekly rehearsals, brainstorms, and group discussions (including a communal meal; the project also provides transportation and pocket money), the girls will perform a final public event for their community, replete with refreshments for all. A videographer periodically documents their progress.

Beyond its social impact, research outputs will include a publication summarizing project and impact, a documentary video, and grant proposals or fundraising initiatives to extend project scope and scale up beyond this initial 3-month pilot. We also have future plans to integrate sewing workshops two days per week, in order to train the girls to become seamstresses, providing them with an important vocational skill for survival. This would cost an additional $600/month however, so we're not there yet!

To experience the transformative power of this program, please watch the video on our website (https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/binti-tucheze/pilot-final-presentation)

Thank you for listening, empathizing, and contributing.