Pamoja Leo is a non-profit organization in Tanzania founded in 2014. They work to promote resilience through community activities, to support leadership and entrepreneurship as skills that will carry children far into adulthood and to ensure that the welfare and wellbeing of children is seen as central and valued.
Where they operate
Organization Type
Main Areas of Work
What They Do
Pamoja Leo works to keep children under 5 in families, prevent malnutrition, provide quality early childhood education and improve livelihoods of those that care for orphans and vulnerable children. Projects include:
- Getting Children Home: helping children living in orphanages to go home to a family, training orphanages on reunification, adoption and fostering as well as work to trace and address the issues in biological families so children can return home safely
- Transforming Orphanages: advocating for better practices and educate communities about the impact of institutional care and the importance of family based care, providing support, resources and promote best practices in the alternative care of children
- Fit Person Program: educating, recruiting and supporting Fit Persons, the Tanzanian equivalent of a foster parent to care for children that are abused, abandoned or have no safe family to live with
- Tanzanian Child Services System (TCSS): developing the first of its kind case management system that monitors children in Orphanage Care in Tanga Region and equips social workers with the data and accountability to ensure that the laws are adhered to and children are safe. They work in collaboration with the social welfare department to use this system.
Residential Care Service Transition Support
Supports they have offered, or plan to offer, include:
- Introducing the importance of family care and reintegration to leaders in the organization
- Strategy and planning for the transition
- Community awareness raising and engagement
- Partnerships
- Government engagement and linking to systems reforms
- Assessments of children and families
- Family tracing
- Preparing children and families for transition
- Social work or case management training or support
- Developing new programs, including:
- Family and community strengthening
- Alternative family care (including kinship care, foster care, adoption)
- Advocacy
- Formula milk programs and daycare services
- General coaching or consultation
- Onsite training
- Online training
- Onsite visits/meetings
- Phone calls/video conference
- Connecting with others or building a network
Pamoja Leo plans to support transitions in Tanzania. We work initially with the under 5s group of children working on supportive services such as free daycares, kinship care support, formula programs. We then Believe in a data driven approach and use the case management system we developed to understand trigger points for exiting the family. We work mostly in collaboration with government and work on foster care as our last stage. We believe it’s more effective to ensure compliance with National laws by working with government than individual homes. We are developing Swahili based resources in 2020 to support others to replicate successes.