Angelia Sanders moved to an East African country called Kenya in 2002 where she spent the next 26 months living and working with the United States Peace Corps as a Health Extension Resource Volunteer. Her job was to work within a small community on issues related to HIV. Over the two years she began to see how much HIV was affecting everyday aspects of life. Teachers and students were constantly absent either to take care of dying family members or to attend funerals. Most people had experienced a loss of either a friend or relative to HIV, yet there is still a lot of stigma against talking about it and being with those that have it. Angelia was able tohave the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) sponsor the training of local volunteers so that they could establish a functioning and free HIV testing center within the community. (Tamani Africa built them a permanent home in 2006.)
The need never left when Angelia left Africa and upon returning to the United States she got some friends together and began to come up with ways of helping children and people still suffering from the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Angelia says: “Each idea has led to another and we look forward to working with those of you who want to make a difference in the lives of people that you may never meet but will forever be changed by your willingness to be involved in something that will give reason to HOPE.”
Angelia with the Kar Geno VCT staff. TamaniAfrica finished construction of the VCT in December 2006.
Joe Sanders started his daughters, Angelia and Mariah, volunteering in high school, but it wasn’t until his 2001 visit to Algeria that he became hooked on volunteering in Africa. Since visiting Angelia while she was in Kenya in 2003, he goes back about twice per year checking on different projects.
His current projects are building kitchens for schools and housing for teachers, reaching out to a rural school for the deaf, establishing small farming projects to grow pineapples and avocados, organizing school uniform production and distribution, building a 3500sqft church made of stone. He oversaw construction of the Kendu Bay VCT and started school lunch feeding programs. He also tries to locate people to pay for high school ($200/year/student) for orphans who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. He has an ongoing program for small business loans. He provides $300, no-interest loans to 10 families. The money they pay back is re-loaned to other eligible families and a continuous cycle will hopefully continue to lift these single parent homes out of poverty. Joe says he helps, "mainly because I can and we also cannot take it with us when we die. So why not put our money to good use so we can see some benefit while we are still alive."
Leslie Harlson could not help but be moved into action by Angelia’s passion and bold ideas. She, Angelia and another colleague molly came up with the Christmas/Holiday card campaign over drinks after a Tuesday night class and TamaniAfrica took off. Having focused on international political economy and development in grad school, she hopes to make a small dent in global inequality through her work with TamaniAfrica. Now in Palo Alto, CA, Leslie works for the German Academic Exchange Service.
Students at Kedowa School for the Deaf display the banner that accompanied the funding for solar panels. 3rd and 4th graders at Hillcrest Elementary in Oakland, CA raised over $3,000 to provide panels for two schools in Kenya. Kedowa School students sent their own handprint banner back to Hillcrest Elementary.
Melodee Baines has been involved with Tamani Africa since 2006 and was inspired to take a more active role. An advanced PhD student in International Political Economy at Old Dominion University, Melodee assists in the financial and accounting needs of Tamani Africa while she is in the US. She is moving to Morocco in September 2009 and intends to make a visit to the Tamani Africa projects Kenya in 2010 from there.
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Primary School students enjoying lunch as part of the Tamani Africa School Lunch program in September 2007.
Working with rural African communities to create sustainable programs through dialogue, partnerships and education in the fight against HIV/AIDS
His current projects are building kitchens for schools and housing for teachers, reaching out to a rural school for the deaf, establishing small farming projects to grow pineapples and avocados, organizing school uniform production and distribution, building a 3500sqft church made of stone. He oversaw construction of the Kendu Bay VCT and started school lunch feeding programs. He also tries to locate people to pay for high school ($200/year/student) for orphans who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. He has an ongoing program for small business loans. He provides $300, no-interest loans to 10 families. The money they pay back is re-loaned to other eligible families and a continuous cycle will hopefully continue to lift these single parent homes out of poverty. Joe says he helps, "mainly because I can and we also cannot take it with us when we die. So why not put our money to good use so we can see some benefit while we are still alive."
