HOSIANA THOMAS LAITAYOKI: Unite Food Program Stock Controller & Warrior for Change Program Manager
A 27-year-old single mother, Hosiana is the last-born in a polygamous Maasai family. She grew up in the rural village of Mkuru in the Arusha district of northern Tanzania in a traditional Maasai community. Her home was a circular structure hand constructed using wood and clay and topped with a thatched grass roof. Her father has two wives (Hosiana’s mother being the second and lesser valued position) and eight children. In keeping with tradition, Hosiana’s family relies on their goats and cattle for food (milk) and income (sales of the animals).
Hosiana faced many challenges growing up, including extreme poverty and a bias against educating girls. However, thanks to her mother’s persistence, Hosiana enrolled in a village government primary school in 2005, walking 12 kilometers from home back and forth every day. While in school, Hosiana excelled in her studies and was named Head Girl; however, it wasn’t easy as in Maasai culture girls and women are rarely allowed leadership positions of any kind. Between 2009 and 2011, a devastating drought wiped out her family’s cattle—their primary source of income—which meant her father had no more funds for her education.
In 2017, with a newborn baby in tow, Hosiana met Anne Wells at a Unite-sponsored women’s health training for Maasai women in Mkuru. The two began corresponding, and in 2018, Anne returned to Mkuru to request Hosiana’s father’s permission for Unite to sponsor her continued education. Once permission was granted, Hosiana enrolled in Tengeru Institute of Community Development, and following her successful graduation, Unite secured for her a year-long posting with a maternity hospital in Arusha, Tanzania. While there, Hosiana worked with an outreach team teaching young women and mothers the critical importance of pre- and post-natal care. Later, in 2021, during the time of COVID, Hosiana returned to Mkuru to execute Unite’s Boma-2-Boma health education initiative, teaching Maasai community members about the importance of hygiene, sanitation, and disease control measures.
Once the COVID crisis passed in Tanzania in late 2021, Hosiana was hired to join the Unite Food Program team in Dar es Salaam. Since then, her roles have evolved and multiplied. Hosiana is extremely talented, trustworthy, strategic, and hardworking. She brings an exceptional attention to detail and superior accounting and project management skills to our team. Hosiana is respected and admired by all, and she and her young daughter Happiness (pictured right with UFP’s newest product, cassava flour) are beloved and cherished members of our Unite family.
Back in Mkuru, Hosiana’s success is evident to all. She has earned enough funds to send Happiness to a quality school; to purchase cattle of her own; and even to build a modern home for her mother outfitted with glass windows, cement walls and floors, and a roof made with iron sheets. Her father is proud and, according to Hosiana, he now sees the value of educating a girl.
Unite showed me love and kindness when I felt like I had lost everything. From having no education and no opportunities, I now have a career, experience, and people who believe in me. I am proud of what I have achieved.
—Hosiana Thomas Laitayoki
Click on the image below for a gallery of photos of Hosiana over her years with Unite.
Reporting contributed to by Esuvath Daniel.