In August this year two staff members from Ace Africa, George Mturi  and Emma Mnyangabe, visited Kome Island, Mwanza Region, Tanzania to further establish and help kick off Ace’s new programmes on the Island.

On Kome Island 63% of people live in abject poverty, 85% have poor diets resulting in their households living in food poverty with 44% of primary school children orphaned and living in vulnerable conditions. With the support of The Innocent Foundation and The Vitol Foundation, Ace hopes to support many children and their communities to help ensure they can attain a healthy, happy and sustainable lifestyle.

George and Emma’s trip proved to be extremely fruitful. They set out many objectives including meeting with district leaders, locating a new office space, recruiting a new staff member to lead Ace’s Community Livelihoods Initiative (CLI), providing training for Ace’s community activators and introducing the Child-to-Child Clubs programme into five primary schools throughout Kome Island.

Ace are thrilled to announce that they have appointed a new CLI Officer on Kome, Shadrack Robert. Shadrack has volunteered at the District Office on Kome for 2 years so knows the area very well. He also has extensive experience on training community groups on business skills and village community banking, both of which are planned activities on the Island. Shadrack, along with George and Emma managed to visit five schools, a village executive office, a health centre and a medical dispensary. This resulted in selecting two community groups from the villages of Nyamiswi and Luhiza to meet with to determine if they will meet Ace’s criteria for support on CLI activities.

Ace have now established themselves on the island with a new office space, located in Nyakariro Village where the power and means of transport is most convenient. The space will be used for staff meetings as well as training sessions for new Ace activators and staff members.

In addition to the baseline research, during this visit Ace realised the lack of knowledge on gardening activities within the communities. Therefore, Ace will be working hard to raise as much community awareness of gardening, beginning with training on agriculture and nutrition and the importance of it in achieving a healthy nutritious diet.

Ace are extremely excited about the years ahead on Kome and thanks to The Innocent Foundation and Vitol Foundation for their support over the next 3 years on the Island.

Kome Island village leaders, health leaders, Ace Africa staff members and CUHAS students and dean on Kome Island.

Children in one of the Kome Island’s primary schools. Children are sitting on the floor due to the lack of desks.

Community Group from Luhiza Village that Ace has identified for training and support.