History of DEVSELF-TZ
The seeds of DEVSELF-TZ were first sown in September 2010 when some of our staff were interacting with TUNAJALI Home Based Care clients in Singida Municipality and encountered absolute poverty amongst them. Poverty, so severe, that it was seriously retarding or, in fact, counteracting the benefits of the treatment that they were receiving. Therefore, it was decided to undertake a form of ‘Household Survey’ in an attempt to identify the ‘poorest of the poor’ HBC clients that would subsequently take part in a Participatory Needs Assessment (PNA) designed to highlight their income-generation needs and ways of addressing them.
The Household Survey instrument was served on some 60 HBC client households’, the names for which had been supplied by their HBC group leaders. It was possible to score a maximum of 20 points as a relatively well-off household in Singidan terms down to a minimum of 0 for the poorest household. In the final outcome of this survey, the results ranged from a high of 15 to a low of 2. It was the 27 participants surveyed who had scored 5 or less who were invited to attend the first phase of the PNA.
The PNA process undertaken is fully-documented under separate cover but can be made rapidly available to any reader of this page who might be interested in seeing it. However, the needs identified during the first workshop, on a roughly 50-50% basis, were either ‘employment’ or ‘capital needed to be self-employed’. At the final PNA meeting in November 20 10, attended by TUNAJALI Regional Programme Manager- Singida, Dr J Tayali, the participants were advised of two possible projects to address the needs they had identified but were also advised that the projects’ subsequent implementation would be dependent on gaining donor funding.
The two projects outlined to the participants were:
a. A pilot, micro-lending project which if successful could be expanded to include more HBC clients and/or PLHA who found it difficult to access credit due to their condition.
b. A test project wherein participants who had voted for straight 'employment' could be funded to join, and play an active part in, a local women's co-operative who were gearing up to go into the citronella candle-making business. If successful, this too could be expanded to either include more of the poorer HBC clients or offered as an idea to other similar cooperatives or employers.
None of the existing NGOs in Singida, however, were prepared to use this research and turn it into a project funding proposal. So, our CEO, Chris Dyer, and our Chairman, Mr Bernard Maira, decided to form Development for Self-Reliance Tanzania (DEVSELF-TZ) to take things forward. Mr Maira was quickly able to gather together 12 Tanzanian founder members and we achieved registration as an NGO in March 2011.
While preparing the constitution and registration documents, the founder members felt that they particularly wanted to include youth as a focus for poverty alleviation. In addition, wherever possible, members wanted the focus of sustainable job creation to be on so called ‘green jobs’. Not only would this create possibilities for sustained poverty alleviation but it would also make a much-needed contribution to environmental conservation in Tanzania.