Programs
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, Mlandizi 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.