Who are we?

Tanzania Vision Support was founded by Mariëlle Jongsma on January 20th, 2002. From August 2001 to August 2003 she has been working as a consultant/trainer for the Tanzania Society for the Blind, an NGO in Dar Es Salaam. In the Netherlands Mariëlle works with VISIO as a specialist teachers at the Royal National Foundation for the Blind and Visually Impaired. For the same organization she visited Bangladesh in the end of 2000 during an 'expert mission' to research and consult for the setup for an educational programme for visually impaired children. In the past she has worked as a teacher in Botswana and Sri Lanka. Furthermore Tanzania Vision Support consists of a small group of enthusiastic volunteers in both Tanzania and the Netherlands.

Why Tanzania Vision Support?

Tanzania is among the poorest of developing countries in the world with over 300,000 blind people of whom many are children. Every year many children turn blind because of malnutrition and vitamine A deficiency. Blindness and other visual handicaps together add up to 50% of all handicaps within Tanzania. Less than 2% of the visually impaired children in Tanzania has a chance to attend any kind of formal education. The sad but realistic results are children suffering from blindness but also being neglected, despised, abused and sometimes even cast off by their parents or community. In contrast with the extensive aid and facilities for visually impaired in the developed part of the world, the situation for these children in Tanzania is often very sad and depressing. Therefore our support and aid is highly required to improve these circumstances. Often a small financial contribution or support by providing simple but effictive materials can make a tremendous difference. In this conviction and based on the need for extra support Tanzania Vision Support was founded. While the larger and well-known development organizations mainly support large-scale project with similarly large funds, Tanzania Vision Support aims to support small-scale projects, individual schools and visually impaired children. Our mission is to improve chances and levels of education for blind and low vision children and to increase their personal independence in daily acitivities.