Originally named Newton-Tanzania Collaborative, Inc., NTC began out of a desire to catalyze the energy and altruism of people in the developed world into positive change for people living in extreme poverty. NTC began in 2006 when Ross Lohr, then an economics student at Boston University, decided to do something about the poverty he was learning about in the classroom. He saw that people with the means and desire to help often became dissuaded from doing so because they did not see progress from their donations. He decided that a community-to-community model could address this issue by giving people an opportunity to form personal relationships. Ross won a grant from Boston University and traveled to Tanzania and met with several communities before settling on Kwala.
Kwala is a rural community of 3,000 people, mostly subsistence farmers. It hosts a primary and secondary school but ranks in the bottom 5% of community education in Tanzania. Kwala has failed to produce any secondary school graduates, preventing Kwala’s families from breaking the vicious cycle of poverty that has plagued the community for generations. The community has placed a high value on education, as they helped build the schools themselves, but lack the resources necessary to provide quality education for their students.
However, NTC realized that undirected donations of aid would not help the community in the long-term. So, they established the NTC Kwala Committee, with 12 members from Kwala’s schools and community and NTC’s 2 project managers. The Kwala Committee meets monthly to consider proposals from the community for meeting its goals for education, and to vote on which project to undertake. NTC provides seed money for the winning proposal, and the Project Directors work with the winning group to: create budgets; obtain additional project funding; manage the project; and ensure the sustainability of the project. The aim of their work is two-fold: to provide aid that will result in the most significant progress toward the village’s educational goals, and to develop the community’s ability to eventually do this without NTC’s help.
NTC (Newton-Tanzania Collaborative, Inc.) - Kwala, Tanzania, Africa