Project History

THE PROJECT FOUNDER

There is quite a story behind the current state of the HPLP. It begins with the project's founder, Elvis Kimisha. Elvis Kimisha was born in 1980, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In the fall of 2001, Elvis enrolled in the renowned Bagamoyo Sculpture School in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. He studied the fine arts, and specialized in traditional clay sculpture and wood carving. Elvis received his diploma in 2004, but the foundations of the HPLP were laid during his last two years of college.

EARLY RUMBLINGS

During Elvis's second year of college, he rented a room from the Kufakunoga family in a house next door to a shelter for orphans and street children. Elvis's life and routines became intertwined with the 50 vulnerable children living literally at his doorstep. While cooking, eating, doing his laundry, and working on sculpture, Elvis formed a bond with many of the orphaned children. Eventually, he learned all about their lives-and the desperate situations that brought them from throughout Tanzania to the shelter in Bagamoyo. One child, Moses, traveled 4,000 miles stowed away on a train, so he could look for work in the big city. All he found were gangs of street children, access to alcohol, drugs and gas to sniff.

Elvis formed the idea that after art school, he would do something to remedy the plight of orphans in Tanzania. His first thought was to open an orphanage. Elvis explained his plan to his father, Sebastian Kimisha. Sebastian told Elvis that if he truly planned to open an children's project, he would give him the land. Sebastian signed over a two-acre plot of dormant agricultural land in the village of Visiga, on the western outskirts of Dar es Salaam. Sebastian Kimisha's land donation marked the concrete beginning of the HPLP.

In September 2002, Elvis met Jay Boss Rubin-a native of Portland, Oregon-who was in Tanzania studying Swahili at the University of Dar es Salaam. When Elvis and Jay met again at the annual Festival of Art in Bagamoyo, Jay learned of Elvis's plan to open an orphanage. He returned to America well-informed of Elvis Kimisha's hopes and dreams.

A SISTER PROJECT EMERGES

Jay Boss Rubin created the PORTLAND CHALLENGE event in the summer of 2003. The Portland Challenge began as a dare amongst friends to ford the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon-to cross it without "money, motors or bridges." It was quickly organized into a public event and fundraiser for the HPLP in Tanzania. The 2003 Portland Challenge proved a successful civic event and fundraiser; $1,021 were raised for the HPLP. A harder-to-quantify cultural connection was also established between Portland, Oregon, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

A CONTINUING COLLABORATION

In January 2004, Jay Boss Rubin returned to Tanzania to work with Elvis Kimisha on the implementation of the HPLP-the $1,021 from the 2003 Portland Challenge their sole funding to work with. At this time, the focus of the HPLP was still on constructing a dormitory building for orphans and other vulnerable children. Jay and Elvis had no timeline and no strategy for operating the orphanage, were it to be completed.

Funds were used to clear the overgrown two-acre plot, consult with an architect, and obtain blueprints. The blueprints showed a potential layout for two buildings on the site-a dormitory with capacity for twelve children, and an administrative building that could also act as a home for additional caretakers and volunteers. Funds were also used to construct an activities hut and begin the registration process for the HPLP with the Tanzanian government.

By April 2004, the HPLP was prepared to begin construction on the smaller, administrative building as soon as more funds became available [Note: Project administrators and advisors saw the smaller, administrative building as a necessary precursor to the dormitory building. Under local construction practices, a smaller building, once completed, acts as a secure container for the construction materials that will be used for a larger building. Cement mix, lumber, and even sand and gravel cannot be left out overnight in some areas of Tanzania, due to theft.]. The 2004 Portland Challenge was another successful event and fundraiser. Fundraising efforts netted approximately $3,000.

Construction on the administrative building began in late 2004, and was completed early in 2005. The HPLP was successfully registered as a nongovernmental organization with the regional and national governments in Tanzania. After another year of fundraising in Portland, the HPLP was set to begin construction on its main dormitory building for orphans and disadvantaged children.

In April 2005, Elvis Kimisha received another visit from Jay Boss Rubin in Dar es Salaam. Jay was astounded by the physical progress on the HPLP site. Theoretically, after another year of successful fundraising, money would be available to begin construction on the main dormitory. The following year's funds could be put toward furnishings and the orphanage's operating budget. While much progress had been made considering the HPLP receives funding from nothing other than an annual swimming event, in April 2005 it seemed as though eons would pass before the HPLP actually began helping the orphans of Tanzania.

With funds from outside the project, Jay arranged for Elvis to spend the summer of 2005 in Portland, Oregon-to help promote, fundraise for, and participate in the 2005 Portland Challenge. Jay and Elvis also taught a free, evening Swahili class in Portland, and encouraged further cultural exchange and visitations between the citizens of Portland and Dar es Salaam. Major strategy sessions on the long-term aim, strategy, feasibility and sustainability of the HPLP took place all summer long. Jay and Elvis brainstormed with leaders from AFRICA BRIDGE and a number of other African development initiatives.

The questions they struggled with: What effect will orphan adoption and housing programs have on the surrounding community in Tanzania? Do orphan adoption and housing programs get to the root of the orphans epidemic in Tanzania? How effective, costly and sustainable would an orphan adoption and housing program really be?

Jay and Elvis's findings led them to the conclusion that an orphan adoption and housing program-essentially the orphanage that had been three years in the making-would not necessarily be the best way to combat the orphans epidemic in Tanzania, or be the best thing for disadvantaged members of the surrounding community.

CHANGING STRATEGIES

The mission of the HPLP has not changed since its inception in 2002. The HPLP continues to provide support to orphans and disadvantaged children in the nation of Tanzania. In the summer of 2005, HPLP's strategy for combating the orphans epidemic in Tanzania was shifting from a program that would provide housing and a supportive environment to a fixed number of children, to a farther-reaching, more participatory community initiative that focuses on child sponsorship and community education.

Jay and Elvis saw a variety of potential problems and shortcomings with a dormitory/live-in orphans' initiative. First and foremost was the limiting factor. Under this scenario, the HPLP could only help as many children as it had space to accommodate and resources to support. Whether the project adopted 12 orphans, 20 orphans, or even 100 orphans, that number would forever remain a drop in the ocean-of the 2.5 million orphaned children in Tanzania.

The dormitory/live-in scenario leaves only room for linear growth, and addresses none of the root causes of the orphans epidemic in Tanzania. The dormitory/live-in scenario, while helping the children who are taken in as members, provides nothing exportable to the surrounding community, or other communities in Tanzania. At best, this scenario hopes to assist in providing a set of non-problematic circumstances for a fixed number of clients, without necessarily encouraging anything more progressive than a turning "orphans" into equally-disadvantaged "non-orphans" in the same community. Finally, extended family and clan networks are the absolute backbone of traditional life in Tanzania, and much of rural, sub-Saharan Africa. An orphan removed from his familial networks and placed in an institution is an offensively non-African solution that ignores the defining structure of African family life: that is-a network of support.

In the summer of 2005, Elvis and Jay considered alternatives to the construction and continual operation of a live-in orphanage program. The question of setting could not be ignored. The live-in orphanage/shelter is appropriate in some scenarios-namely, urban scenarios in which programs attempt to draw street children away from street life. The orphans shelter Elvis lived adjacent to in Bagamoyo-where he first discovered his aptitude for working with troubled children-is the perfect example. The children at the Bagamoyo shelter arrive in urban areas on their own, after fleeing troubled, or nonexistent home lives throughout Tanzania. After falling into street life with more experienced street children in big cities, some children are brought to the Bagamoyo shelter via outreach programs, and others hear about the shelter through word of mouth, and simply show up there. Young children at the Bagamoyo shelter literally come and go as they please. The shelter is successful in forming relationships with some street children, but is not able to penetrate the troubled clouds of others. Coming and going, extremely at-risk children often sleep fifty to a room, some in bunks, others shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. Shelters for orphans and street children provide an essential service for children who are already at-risk and living on the street. However, they do nothing to combat the phenomenon of orphaned and vulnerable children fleeing rural settings to come to urban areas.

The two-acre, HPLP site in the village of Visiga is nearly 100 kilometers from the urban center of Dar-es-Salaam. Although the bustling metropolis of 2.5 million is only an hour away by minibus, Visiga is a distinctly rural setting. While there are surely children from Visiga who flee troubled home lives and end up in Dar es Salaam, there are not street children or any homeless youth in the immediate vicinity of Visiga. There are orphans and other vulnerable children hanging on to the peripheries of their extended family networks. There are orphans and other vulnerable children who, without additional support, will surely wander the streets of Dar es Salaam in search of a better alternative.

It is into this scenario, of extended family networks that have little or no means to support their orphaned children, that the HPLP can have the greatest impact. By working within the existing extended family networks in rural Tanzania, as opposed to creating its own "family" of adopted orphans, the HPLP can have a far greater impact on the orphans epidemic in Tanzania. Also, by creating models of support structures within existing communities-by providing a service that is replicable and scaleable-there is no limiting factor on the impact the HPLP can have on orphans, families and rural communities.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION

As the HPLP began transitioning from an "orphanage project" to broader programs of community support, the HPLP forged a partnership with the Learning in a Village program. The Learning in a Village program, or LEVI, is a rural education initiative in Tanzania, also in its initial stages of implementation. Currently, there are no resources like the envisioned LEVI learning centers. Many efforts are underway by individuals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), regional and international organizations, and the government of the United Republic of Tanzania to provide financial assistance to people in need, especially women and youth groups. One of the current government efforts, for example, is the directive to local government officials to set aside 10 percent of their income for loans to women and youth groups. But while the government and other stakeholders have been willing to provide some financial support to poor people, efforts to empower these people through education and skill-building have been lacking. LEVI currently operates one trial learning center in the outlying Kitunda neighborhood of Dar es Salaam, and one trial learning center in the village of Ulolela, in southwestern Tanzania.

The main intention of LEVI is to "enable people in their local rural environments to identify their available resources-human and natural, physical and mental (intellectual)-and put them to effective use in daily and diversified socioeconomic, cultural, and political activities." (from the 2004 Learning in a Village Periodic Report) The HPLP currently operates learning center programs for children and teens, to supplement and reinforce academic programs in government schools. In the near future, the HPLP will begin offering functional, educative assistance to, not only vulnerable children, but their extended family networks, and the community as a whole.

Knowledge and skills will enable rural Tanzanians to unlock their full potential without having to abandon their villages as places where they can live comfortably. One significant function of education, among many others, is to show the means by which men and women deal critically and discover creatively how they can participate in the transformation of their world (Shaull forward in Freire [1972:14]). Functional learning centers will enable young people to enjoy their lives in their respective villages instead of migrating into big cities such Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Morogoro, and Mbeya. Community education is a key component of the HPLP.