Today we visited the Destiny Foundation. It’s a project for kids who have mental and psychical disabilities. Here in Tanzania the children who have certain disabilities don’t get the right care and education. This has several reasons, such as the parents who don’t know what to do with them. When the kids have an disorder like autism, or down syndrome, the parents won’t find any help, or don’t go to the hospital because the kids don’t have an physical disorder.

A lot of people leave the kids alone and won’t let them attempt any social-cultural occasions because they think this is best for them. They simply don’t know any better. Some kids never get to meat other kids, can’t play with them and can’t have a real childhood. But also learning things, go to school or other activities is for a lot of kids with disabilities here in Tanzania not an option.

The destiny foundation is trying to give already 80 children from all over Tanzania the possibility to actually do all those thing. They offer physiotherapy, a doctor, speech therapy, visual stimulation, community awareness building and survival activities and life skills. They volunteers here (the whole organisation depends on volunteers and sponsors) told me that there purpose is not to get every kid into college but that every kid is pushed and learned to participate as much as they can in the society.

There are 12 kids who live permanent in the house, the other once are coming 2 or 4 times in the week. The volunteers also go to different villages to see families with kids who cant be transported and help where they can. Those are villages from the neighbourhood but last week they received a call from a family in Dodoma (which lies 447 km away) if they wanted to come over, and visit them. This was a family with 3 disabled children.

Some of them can go to school eventually, other can learn to have chicken, like the rest of the village, grow vegetables and sell them. They can help there families in little ways and become the best versions of themselves. Because the whole organisation consist from volunteers, it often depends what kind of health care is available. But when a physiotherapist stops by, they often make scandals with exercises and learn to the other volunteers how to continue so the caregiving to the children can continue as well when a certain volunteer leaves.

We had a little tour, saw participated in one of the classes, they where learning fruits in English! I was very impressed by how active almost every kid assisted the class. We also danced with the kids, they loved it, as well as singing, it was beautiful to see how happy they were. We met a lot of kids with a lot of different stories but one of the kids touched me the most.
There was this 17 year old boy who was found in the forest, he had lived in the trees with other animals for quite a long time. Three years ago he was found three years ago and now is living and playing with the other kids. I didn’t see him talk but he was still climbing in everyone and everything and did understand certain words.

A few months ago the foundation received his birth certificate, this said he was 17 years old. He was as big as an 6/7 year old and also looked like that. I am 18 years old myself, so I barely could imagine that he was just one year younger than me. This is because he lived in the trees between the animals so probably eat just enough to survive and sustained a growth/ development lag because of that.

We asked the fuonation what they wanted to receive as a donation from us. We thought they would say school supplies or toys but they said food… We startled from this, to hear that they have such little food that they wanted food instead of toys. So we went to the marked, bought fruits, vegetable and bread for them. However we couldn’t resist to buy some balls for the kids to play with.

It was quite impressive to see this amazing foundation, to see what they want to maintain and how they found a way to do this. To see that these kids are able to achieve something regardless there background and to see the love and attention that they are given.