Nurturing Minds

Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, where only one child out of every five finishes primary school and continues to secondary school, or high school. In Tanzania, thousands of teenage girls drop out of school each year for reasons of poverty, pregnancy, early marriage, or the death of their parents. Nurturing Minds provides quality education for poor, marginalized, at-risk Tanzanian girls, aged 12 to 15, who otherwise would not be able to attend school.

Nurturing Minds works with its Tanzanian partner–Secondary Education for Girls’ Advancement, or SEGA– to provide education for poor girls. Together we are constructing and developing the Sega Girls School, a residential eco-friendly school that provides education for bright, motivated Tanzanian girls who otherwise would not be in school. After three years of operation, Nurturing Minds is supporting  85 girls, providing them with a pathway out of poverty and a brighter future.

The school includes student and staff-tended gardens, which produce much of the fresh food for the school community. Our program also includes counseling and life and decision-making skills—instrumental in nurturing self-confidence and the social skills girls need to succeed.

By 2015, our goal is to support 200 students at the Sega Girls School and to ensure that the school will be self-sufficient through small businesses run by teachers and students.