What We Do
Our Mission
The mission of Africa Bridge is to listen to Tanzanian children and empower their communities to protect, support and care for orphaned and vulnerable children through integrated sustainable development.
Our Approach
We use an integrated approach that works through local families and communities. They agree to identify and care for children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS and other diseases. We bring resources, technology and training to create sustainable incomes for the caregivers.
The children receive housing, clothing and food, social and legal support, and at least a primary school education. We make each project sustainable to create permanent change.
Africa Bridge has projects in sixteen villages in the Masoko and Isongole wards of Rungwe District, located in Mbeya Region in southwestern Tanzania. In fourteen of our villages, 32% of children are either orphaned or vulnerable; in the two others, nearly 50% are vulnerable.
Forty million people live in Tanzania, one of the most stable, yet poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The median age is seventeen years, and fifteen years in some of the villages that Africa Bridge serves.
This imbalance between caring adults and needy children helps create extreme poverty. Families who care for village children don't have the resources to provide for their basic needs. We interrupt this cycle through an approach that came from adults and children in the villages, in partnership with local government, churches, community members, and families.
Core Principles
- We listen, gathering extensive feedback and input from children and local leaders. Our projects are designed by Africans for Africans.
- We encourage men, women and children to come together as equals, discover their common ground and plan for their future.
- We combine Africa's deep values of community and relationship with Western resources and technologies. We facilitate local solutions and foster independence.
- We strengthen families and their communities so that they can become empowered, economically secure and have the capacity to protect and nurture their children.
Click here to download our brochure in 
PDF format.
Click here to download our 2008 Annual Report in PDF format (6mb file).
