I, Hyasinta Mgonja am from Tanzania East Africa. I have a BA in Sociology, specializing in project management, and am qualified as a social worker and project manager from St. Augustine University of Tanzania. I have 5 years of experience as a social worker and in project management. I have a certificate in Building local knowledge for community resilience. But also, I have a background in DELTA and now TFT. I am now working as CEO, founder and project manager at TICR.
I love working with the community, especially with the less privileged. It is my passion and I feel happy working with the community. My happiness is to see people transformed and living a happy life.
TICR is a Non – Governmental organization in Mwanga District in Kilimanjaro region. It was started as a community help group and its main activities have to do with women and youth capacity building, VICOBA- (community banking), and skills trainings. Due to some of the achievements made as a group, in 2019 the group was registered officially and was recognized as an NGO. At present, the organization operates in several areas in Tanzania with several projects on women’s economic empowerment, health, especially Maternal education to Maasai communities, environmental conservation, economic empowerment, education, skills, and livelihood training.
TICR focuses on creating the adaptive capacity of the individual, communities, societies, organization, co-operations, and social-economic systems to work together for community transformation. We would like to be part of the solution for the Tanzanian community working together for sustainable development.
Change begins with me
TFT helped me realize that “changes begin with me”. As a leader and social worker, I used to tell people what to do but now I realize that I start and transform the knowledge. I look at agriculture as a solution for women and youth to overcome poverty in Tanzania and I used to tell them to do this but now I am myself growing crops and the people around me are very inspired by it and they are willing to join forces and do agriculture. TFT has made me view the world differently in my work but as an individual first TFT gave me energy because I am not alone, we are a big network.
Before I thought that everything should start with a lot of capital in any project I was doing but after TFT I realized that we only need willingness, spirit to say I can and initiative to see things happening, commitment, efforts, and when you put little capital and encouragement the result become big. I really thank TFT for the new methods and approach to doing things.
I have increased my efforts in development work, using TFT methods and the communities appreciate how we engage with them. “After our meeting, I saw something different from the way we used to do things, especially in solving problems related to our community because I participated to find solutions based on our capacity,” said Namnyaki from the Masaai community after a meeting on environmental conservation. TICR also created a platform for youth from different countries to engage with each other on entrepreneurship and some have started generating income for themselves. Beda, for example, is selling software to schools and organisations.
