Global Volunteers, an Alliance to End Hunger member, offers short-term volunteers an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to a groundbreaking demonstration program providing nutrition and health care to pregnant moms, newborns, and toddlers in Tanzania. Global Volunteers, one of the nation’s longest-serving international community development organization, has worked in partnership on long-term projects with local people in Tanzania for over 33 years.
Be the change in Tanzania! Help eradicate hunger at the village level.
The Reaching Children’s Potential (RCP) Program employs breakthrough methods providing resources, information, services, and appropriate technologies to prevent childhood stunting. Short-term volunteers are key to providing a consistent stream of information and resources. Students and professionals of all backgrounds, along with generalists of all ages comprise some 15 two-week teams annually. Each team of volunteers provides their unique skills under the direction of local health care providers, teachers, and other community leaders.
Global Volunteers – RCP provides essential services focusing on hunger and health to children through their 18th birthday, with a heavy focus on their first 1,000 days of life. The comprehensive development program is incubating in three demonstration villages in the Iringa District, centered around a health and nutrition compound including a health clinic (due to be completed in March 2018), a central guest housing and workshop facility, and a raised garden area. Participating families are counseled and children’s development measured by Global Volunteers caregivers and volunteers in weekly home visits. At the same time, globally prescribed best practices taught through the RCP curriculum are reinforced within families’ homes.
The ground-breaking program is rooted in a steady supply of volunteers.
The initial RCP research and groundwork were conducted from 2012 through 2016 in Anse-la-Raye, St. Lucia. The outcomes were reported to Global Volunteers’ Tanzanian partners, who subsequently brought the program components to the Iringa District villages of Ipalamwa, Lulindi, and Mkalanga.
From 120 to 250 volunteers are needed throughout 2018 as the village programs grow to assist local leaders, kindergarten, primary and secondary school teachers, rural health care providers, community health workers, and midwives to deliver health-based information and attack the causes of childhood stunting. As lasting behavior change is required to fully eliminate the barriers to children’s growth and development, it may take 10+ years for each community of 3,000 to 5,000 people to shift to a culture that supports children to reach their full human potential. 
Large-scale advancements expanding in 2018.
Through the generous donation of a Global Volunteers’ alumna’s family foundation, we’ve been able to complete the first major facility – a guesthouse and education center – and have broken ground on the new regional health clinic, which will serve all three RCP villages. The comprehensive program housed in the health and education compound serves as the model for scaled-up, multi-village, child and mother-centered services throughout the Iringa District. More than 100 families are formally enrolled to receive services through the RCP program such as micronutrient supplements, container gardens, access to workshops and home visits. Current developments are:
- Volunteers with the assistance of local people have installed more than 100 handwashing stations throughout two of the villages.
- Volunteers are conducting 12 workshops for RCP families on nutrition, healthy pregnancies, breastfeeding and complementary feeding, controlling infectious disease, attachment, developmental milestones, infant first aide and more.
- Full household garden program. A greenhouse to grow seedlings was built. Local staff has been trained to manufacture garden boxes on site, using locally sourced materials, and to grow seedlings to plant in the gardens.
- A new community health clinic serving three demonstration villages will provide general medical care, and serve as a center for information on nutrition, micronutrient supplementation, prenatal, postnatal, and infant support (first 1,000 days) and family planning services. Four medical staff have been hired.
- English Language Camps for primary school students during school breaks.
Groups of students and professionals are eligible for substantial discounts on the fixed, tax-deductible program contribution of $1,662 to $2,295 for one or two weeks, including all meals, lodging, in-country transportation, project materials and emergency medical evacuation insurance. www.globalvolunteers.org/email@globalvolunteers.org