Supporting the local community
Jobortunity
Jobortunity is a training institute in Arusha, Tanzania, to enable vulnerable youth (between the age of 18-24) to get a job and keep a job in the hospitality industry. The mission of Jobortunity is to provide 10 months of training focused on the development of employability skills (work attitude) to enable them to obtain and retain jobs. To find out more about Jobortunity and their Hi5 approach visit their website here.
Rivertrees regularly hosts the Jobortunity students during their 3 month internship and invites all back to interview as a full time employee after they graduate. Currently, Rivertrees proudly employees 7 full time employee graduates from the Jobortunity program in various departments such as service, concierge, spa, and housekeeping.
Bahati
Bahati’s mission began with integrating women from the judicial system back into the community. Working together with impoverished village women and high risk young girls, former inmates were able to learn a trade, to overcome the past & stigma and begin a new dignified life. The project has now evolved into an independent competent jewelry work shop. Elizabeth Caleb and her group of women produce beautiful beaded jewelry necklaces & bracelets as well as beaded baskets in Usa River. They have added a new tapestry sewing project to their line of products, and offer colorful wall hangings and cushion covers. Bahati also supports St. Gabriel’s orphanage, in Arusha, home to eight young children with mothers in jail.
Products are sold in the Bahati Shop in Rivertrees Country Inn.
The Rivertrees Foster Kids
Rivertrust supports the Rivertrees Foster Kids, a program presently sponsoring four young people in education, accommodation, healthcare and much more.
All four come from Arusha’s streets, where they lived in desperate conditions with poor or non existent access to basic human needs such as family, security, shelter, nutrition or healthcare. The program gives them the chance to grow and mature in a nurturing and caring environment.
SIAFU Widows Group
SIAFU is a group of Tanzanian widows with a wonderful entrepreneurial spirit hoping to get on their feet by starting small micro finance ventures & businesses. They look after themselves and their families, 62 extended family orphans and take care to remember and assist the elderly in Usa River.
The most challenging endeavor of Rivertrees Community Support is finding a solution to integrate the widows & elders of the village back into the community. These are grandmothers and grandfathers, living without income in the most desperate conditions. They are often ill, disabled, cold and hungry, socially isolated, and in constant fear of losing their home. Many of these elderly are expected to care for an orphaned younger generation and need support.
Every year at Christmas, Rivertrust brings Christmas cheer food parcels to over 250 elderly in Usa River.
Bibi Miriam is the first of our elderly residents in Usa River to be hired as a professional grandmother to look after the Rivertrees Foster Kids: Emmanuel, Zawadi, Grace, and Giligilani. It has given them a sense of family, comfort and structure in their lives.
The Usa River Writer’s Club
The idea of the Usa River Writers Club was born out of a meeting of three passionate book lovers who wanted to go a step further and try their hand at writing & pass on the love of books & reading to the local community.
Rivertrust is putting together an exciting collection of short stories about travel & life in Tanzania and hope to publish this in 2012.
So far 7 exciting entries have been collected and we are now spreading our efforts to find young potential writers in the secondary schools in the Arusha District. This project is open to anyone living or travelling in Tanzania.
The Workshops are aimed at encouraging & supporting budding writers in our community. We hope that together with our anthology, writers will assist in promotion of literacy, book clubs, poetry clubs and writing workshops in the region. With the help of several fund raisers and support of the community we hope that we will make our dream of a modern library in Usa River true. Rivertrust will be holding special Literacy Dinners as of November 2011 to tempt members of the community & travelers to support literacy in our local community.