Our History
As volunteers providing healthcare to impoverished populations around the globe, we saw one-time healthcare delivery as important and also inadequate. Our vision grew to create sustainable change through linking access to healthcare, education including disease prevention, and economic opportunity within the populations we serve. To accomplish this goal, Health & Hope Foundation was formed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2014.
Those most vulnerable, widowed or abandoned women and orphaned children, are our focus. By listening to local leaders in Tanzania with whom we have strong relationships, we learn community challenges. Together we form ideas and strategies to address obstacles that affect vulnerable and impoverished families and maintain their cycle of poverty.
Our Programs are organic and continually modified to fit specific community needs. Initially, we began with physical complaints of a group of elderly women who presented in clinic with joint pain, respiratory issues, and sore eyes. Through home visits, we learned the women were impoverished, widowed, and each raising multiple grandchildren having lost their parents through AIDS and a variety of reasons. Few of the orphaned children were attending school due to a lack of funds, perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
The women's symptoms were a result of their work "Crashing Rock". They earned $1.50 per day to break large rocks into gravel for local construction projects. The women were immediately provided masks, safety glasses, stronger hammers, stretching, and physical therapy exercises. Strategic planning and mentorships were initiated and ongoing to help her develop options in a diverse range of sustainable economic opportunities within the Women's Business Program. Tumaini Tutor School was established to provide orphaned and impoverished children access to free tutored education for pre-primary thru secondary school.
Our Programs continually evolve as needed to lift up and bring empowerment and hope to women and their families, to disrupt a cycle of poverty.
