“The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.”
—Mother Teresa
Ezekiel Abiasan Mgelele and his wife and five children stand (center) with Unite Scholar Bartazaro Elias who has been “blessing” this family through the Unite Blessing Campaign with regular gifts of cassava, maize, and ground nuts. To the left is the family home and to the right is the storage place where they keep all of their belongings.
Ezekiel Abiasan Mgelele and his wife live together in the remote Uvinza district of the Kigoma region, Western Tanzania, with their five children (ages 3 months to 12 years old) in a shack that is hand constructed using grasses, tree limbs, tarps, and kitenge fabrics. They sleep on straw laid over the dirt ground and use a nearby lean-to for the storage of their belongings. They have no electricity and walk miles to the nearest stream to collect water. None of the children attend school as Ezekiel cannot afford to purchase even school uniforms. Ezekiel’s wife says that she is “ashamed” of their living conditions; however, they spent all the money they had years ago when one of their children fell ill.
Ezekiel and his family are seven of 2,312 people who have been reached and served to date by our Unite Blessing Campaign, an outreach program designed to:
Provide crucial lifesaving support to Tanzania’s most vulnerable,
Support entrepreneurship and small business development, and
Nurture the minds and hearts of our Unite Scholars and their communities.
One of the first things we do when we enroll students into our Unite Scholars Program is to provide them with grants to launch and grow their own small businesses. Our goal is to help them learn and hone hands-on entrepreneurial skills as well as to find creative ways in which to earn much needed funds for themselves and their families. [Note: Family members run the small businesses while our scholars are away at school.] Over the years our scholars have had great success with these grants, from avocado, rice, banana, and maize farming to poultry and rabbit keeping, dressmaking and tailoring, shop keeping, soap and charcoal making, establishing small restaurants and catering businesses, and more.
We first launched the Unite Blessing Campaign during the devastating COVID-19 pandemic to provide further support to our scholars by purchasing goods from their businesses (thus providing them additional income). We then asked them to identify people in their communities living in greatest need and to then give those people their goods as “blessings.” This was — and continues to be — often a challenging task as approaching strangers can be nerve wracking, especially when people question — at least at first — our scholars’ motives and intentions (such random acts of kindness are not common). Thankfully, once people understand that nothing “witchy” is going on and that there are no ulterior motives (indeed our Unite family is just being kind and generous), they warmly welcome our scholars and give abundant thanks for their blessings.
To date 75 Unite Scholars have been involved in this blessing campaign, using modest financial investments from Unite (often just $10 - $20 at a time — each scholar may receive dozens of blessing installments from Unite over months and/or years) to extend basic needs to neighboring widows, street children, elderly, people living with disabilities, outcasts, and others who are suffering.
“The Unite Blessing Campaign exemplifies how targeted, compassionate interventions can transform lives. By providing crucial support to those in need, Unite is creating a world in which everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and hope.”
– Reporter for this blog post, Unite Scholar Elisha John George
Thanks to the support of generous Unite donors from all around the world, the Unite Blessing Campaign has evolved into a Tanzanian nation-wide, well recognized beacon of hope, ensuring that our Unite Scholars and the needy receive much-needed assistance.
When our Unite Scholars are home over their long school breaks and not working their businesses or traveling throughout their districts “blessing” others, many — like Bartazaro — further serve their communities by teaching in local schools, providing one-on-one tutoring to students in need, and speaking in local churches about the critical importance of education for children and the society at large. (In Bartazaro’s former primary school where he now volunteers there are four full-time teachers for 700 pupils. In this district, about half of students will drop from school due to poverty and/or a lack of commitment.) Bartazaro’s goal? “I want to raise the literacy in my society to foster development and to encourage new perspectives so that we can uplift the living standard of our people.”
I am so proud of each and every one of our Unite Scholars for their commitment to serving and caring for those in need. Everyone everywhere — regardless of income, background, or circumstance — has something to give, some hope to offer, which can positively impact the lives of others in ways known and unknown. May God bless our Unite family and world of friends and supporters for making such blessings possible. Asante Sana. Thank you so very much. —Anne Wells