Lift Her Voice

The lack of safe spaces and support systems for secondary school girls in Tanzania to discuss sensitive topics like sexuality, gender-based violence, and reproductive health is a significant problem affecting their well-being and ability to reach their full potential. 

In Tanzania, over half of all girls aged 15–19 years are not in school. Poverty, early pregnancy and cultural norms contribute to high school dropout rates among girls. Only about 35% of girls complete secondary school compared to 43% of boys. Those who remain in school often face challenges such as sexual harassment, lack of access to menstrual hygiene products, and stigma surrounding menstruation and sexuality that can negatively impact their health and education.

Globally, 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most commonly by an intimate partner. In Tanzania, over 50% of ever-married women have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner. Gender-based violence not only violates human rights, but can have severe and long-lasting physical, mental and social consequences for victims. It is also a major barrier to achieving gender equality.

Lack of comprehensive sexuality education also puts young people at risk. Only 30% of Tanzanian secondary schools teach sexuality education, and the curriculum is often inadequate. As a result, Tanzania has a high adolescent birth rate of 127 births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19 years. Early and unintended pregnancy is one of the leading causes of school dropout, especially among girls. It perpetuates the intergenerational cycle of poverty and limits girls' life opportunities.

Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare is also limited. Only 43% of the need for modern contraception in Tanzania is satisfied, contributing to the high rate of unintended pregnancies. Challenges including distance to facilities, cost, and stigma deter many youth from seeking SRH services and counselling. 

These interrelated issues disproportionately affect secondary school girls in Tanzania. Through the Lift Her Voice centers located within schools, this solution aims to empower approximately 5,000 girls annually by addressing the root barriers they face through a safe space, counseling, healthcare, and skills-building programs tailored to their needs and circumstances. On a wider scale, by creating an approach that can be expanded to additional schools, it seeks to systematically improve conditions for the over 2.5 million girls enrolled in Tanzanian secondary schools nationwide.

Our solution is the Lift Her Voice empowerment centers located within the grounds of two rural secondary schools in the Ryora District of Tanzania. 

Since establishing the first center in December 2022 at Kichangani Secondary School, and the second at Butimba Secondary in February 2023, we have directly supported over 2500 young adolescent girls between the ages of 12-17.

The centers provide a safe, stigma-free, and girl-only space where students can access counseling, healthcare, and skills-building programs. Counselors are available daily to provide confidential advice and support on issues affecting the girls’ wellbeing, such as relationships, gender-based violence, sexuality questions, and reproductive or mental health concerns. 

Linked to each center is a small medical clinic staffed by a female clinical officer and counselor who provide basic healthcare services including screening and treatment for common issues as well as contraception and family planning guidance. Menstrual hygiene products and pain relief medication are also available. 

In addition to counseling and healthcare, the centers run daily activities aimed at empowering girls with practical life skills and bolstering their confidence and self-esteem. These include workshops on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, leadership, computer literacy, and public speaking. Extracurricular activities like sports, art, and debate clubs give girls a safe social outlet and space for self-expression.

Through this holistic one-stop approach within the schools, we aim to address the intersecting barriers that can undermine girls' health, education, and potential. Feedback from students, parents and teachers has been incredibly positive, demonstrating the centers are effectively lifting up voices and improving well-being in sustainable ways within these rural communities.

Our solution primarily serves secondary school-aged girls between 12-17 years old living in the rural District of Tanzania. This population faces many challenges unique to their circumstances that negatively impact their health, education, and development.

Living in remote villages, these girls have very limited access to services best suited to their needs. Culturally, discussing topics like puberty, sexuality, or experiences with violence is discouraged. Without a safe space, girls are less likely to seek help when facing challenges like sexual harassment, early pregnancy, or gender-based violence - issues that can derail their education and futures.

Poverty compounds these issues. With family responsibilities and the cost of education supplies, menstrual products are often unaffordable - leading many girls to miss up to a week of school per month or drop out entirely due to lack of access. This traps them in cycles of disempowerment and poverty.

Our centers directly address these needs through a tailored package of integrated services all under one safe, supportive, stigma-free roof within the school grounds. Counseling and healthcare provide confidential help for sensitive issues when and where they need it most. Basic medical services fill critical gaps for routine and emergency care.

Skills workshops impart abilities to make informed choices, manage their health and careers, or start a small business. Self-esteem building activities give opportunities for social support and leadership development and education. Menstrual products ensure continuous education.

By addressing intersecting obstacles through this holistic model, our centers empower girls with knowledge, support and life skills to overcome disadvantage, fulfill their potential, and make choices that positively impact their health and livelihoods - not just for themselves but their future families and communities as well. We are dedicated to nurturing the next generation of rural Tanzanian girls to thrive.

As young Tanzanian women who grew up in rural communities like the ones our centers serve, our team is uniquely positioned to deliver this culturally appropriate solution. 

My name is Asha. I grew up in the village of Butimba, just 3 kilometers from where our second center is now located. I saw firsthand how common issues like lack of menstrual supplies, relationship challenges, and unwanted pregnancy impacted local girls' wellbeing and life trajectories. After earning my teaching degree, I wanted to create safe solutions within the school system itself using a holistic, youth-focused model.

Our team lead, Ester, is from Kichangani village near our other center. She overcame barriers like early marriage to complete her nursing training. Now she ensures our healthcare services are accessible, private, and fill critical gaps for underserved students. 

Many of our counselors, mentors and activity facilitators also grew up locally or have family in these communities. They deeply understand the cultural and resource realities girls face - from water access to expectations around relationships - enabling culturally sensitive, locally relevant programming. 

From the beginning, we prioritized community feedback on center activities, operations and opportunities for improvement. Ongoing girls forums allow privacy to discuss sensitive needs, while parents/leaders advise on sustainability and support. Teachers provide insights on challenges affecting learning. 

Our proximity means students see themselves reflected in the mentors, counselors and role models providing services. This fosters trust and willing engagement from students accessing much-needed, previously absent resources. We remain dedicated to returning skills and knowledge gained to empower future generations in these areas.

Our two Lift Her Voice centers currently serve over 2500 secondary school girls in the Ryora District of Tanzania on an ongoing basis.

At the Kichangani Secondary School center, which opened in December 2022, we provide services and programming to approximately 1200 girls across all forms (grades) of the school. This accounts for almost the entire female student population of the school. 

The center at Butimba Secondary School opened in February 2023 and currently serves around 1300 girls from that school. We have done extensive outreach to ensure all female students are aware of the services and feel welcome at the centers.

Some key metrics on the populations served:

• Over 1200 counseling sessions have been conducted at the two centers collectively, representing around 50% of the total girls served so far. 
• 500 girls have received healthcare services such as STI screening, contraception guidance, and treatment for conditions like UTIs or malaria.
• Skills workshops and extracurricular activities have engaged with over 2000 girls between the two centers over the last 6 months.
• Menstrual hygiene products have been distributed to 1500 girls who otherwise may have missed school days each month due to lack of access.

We collect ongoing feedback and aim to continuously expand our outreach and services. Our goal is to reach 100% of female students at these two partner schools to empower youth in sustainable ways at the community level.

What makes our Lift Her Voice centers innovative is that we are tackling SRHR barriers faced by adolescent girls in rural Tanzania through a holistic, sustainable one-stop model located directly within secondary schools. 

By bringing together counseling, healthcare, skills-building, and empowerment programming all under one safe, supportive roof that girls interact with daily, our solution aims to systematically and efficiently address intersecting challenges in a fully integrated manner. This sets our centers apart from more piecemeal approaches and fills critical gaps where conventional health facilities or pilot programs fall short in remote areas. By establishing permanent infrastructure hosted within schools, we can more durably serve communities at scale.

Our model also innovates through its strong focus on developing local capacity. By prioritizing a staff from the target regions, including mentors as young as 18, our centers empower rural youth to become catalysts for change in their own communities through service provision and leadership roles. 

We collect ongoing qualitative and quantitative data to guide improvement and monitor long-term impact. Through documentation and partnership, our centers aim to serve as a replicable model across Tanzania and beyond. 

With support, our centers have potential to strengthen other sectors. For example, by training future healthcare workers, working with teachers to enhance inclusive policies, and catalyzing multi-sector collaborations through referral networks between organizations addressing intersecting barriers. 

While not technology-focused per se, our solution innovates through its integrated, girl-centered approach tailored directly to the lived experiences and cultural realities of underserved populations. If successful, this sustainable, community-led model could meaningfully improve health, education and empowerment outcomes for Tanzanian youth for generations to come.

Our impact goals are:

• Provide counseling, healthcare and skills-building to 3,000 girls across our 2 centers  
• Increase modern contraceptive usage by 15% through counseling and services
• Reduce menstrual absences by 50% through continuous access to supplies

We will achieve this by:

• Expanding outreach and partnerships within schools and the community
• Strengthening our counseling programming and training more mentors
• Enhancing healthcare services through supportive supervision

Next 5 years:   

• Empower 5,000+ girls across 5 centers in Ryora district and beyond
• Reduce unintended pregnancy rates among beneficiaries by 30%
• See 90% secondary school completion rates among regular center participants  

We will work towards this by: 

• Assessing feasibility of establishing 3 additional school-based centers  
• Better monitoring our indicators through strengthened data collection
• Developing youth leadership programs and social enterprises
• Engaging in advocacy to amplify the voices of rural Tanzanian girls

Long-term, through a self-sustaining model and continued collaboration, we envision empowering an entire generation of young people to freely exercise their rights and reach their full potential. 

Our goals align with the UN SDGs, especially 3, 4, 5 - to ensure healthy lives, inclusive education, and gender equality for all. We believe this integrated approach can profoundly improve livelihoods in our region for decades to come.

Our theory of change is that by providing integrated empowerment services to girls within their schools, we can directly address barriers to SRH access and education while also building life skills and social support networks.

Our key activities like counseling, healthcare, and skill-building workshops lead to immediate outputs such as:

• Improved knowledge of puberty, relationships and contraception (Mended Hearts research showed counseling boosted knowledge 3-fold)
• Access to supplies and medical care previously out of reach (Plan International found 33% lower dropout rates with accessible menstrual products) 
• Strengthened self-efficacy and aspirations through mentorship (CARE's studies attribute rising confidence to safe social support systems)

In the short-term, supporting girls holistically within an encouraging school environment will yield outcomes such as:  

• Increased modern contraceptive use (Guttmacher analysis links counseling + services to double usage rates)
• Reduced pressure of early marriage or pregnancy disrupting education (UNESCO found integrated programs cut odds of leaving school by over 90%)
• Longer-term, as girls graduate having built resilience, workforce skills and control over their futures, we foresee impacts like:
• Lowered adolescent birth rates (WHO cites comprehensive programming connection to 60% decline globally) 
• Continued education at the tertiary level (World Bank data shows 95% probability with informal support networks)

Qualitative research and participant feedback further validate how our accessible, trusted centers directly fill gaps limiting potential. By sustaining this model at scale with community collaboration, we aim to transform the trajectory of rural Tanzanian girls and youth.

Our core team consists of:

4 full-time staff (myself as founder/director, 2 center managers, 1 M&E coordinator)

8 part-time mentors (2 at each school location)

2 contractual healthcare workers (1 nurse and 1 community health volunteer) who visit the centers weekly

We also have an advisory board consisting of 5 community members (1 man, 4 women) who provide guidance on important issues semi-annually such as outreach and sustainability planning.

We have been working on our solution since November 2022. While the inspiration and research for the solution began earlier, the formal operations of our organization, Lift Her Voice, started in November 2022 with our current core team. At that time, we launched our pilot programs at two secondary school sites in rural Tanzania - Kichangani Secondary School and Butimba Secondary School. 

Since November 2022, we have been focused on establishing our integrated empowerment center model, implementing programming, collecting initial outcome data, developing partnerships, and working to refine and scale our girl-led approach to meet the significant needs in our communities.

Our approach centers diversity, equity and inclusion at every level. As an organization dedicated to empowering marginalized female youth, these principles are core to our mission and daily operations.

At the leadership level, our all-female Tanzanian team represents the population we serve. We intentionally recruit staff and mentors locally to reflect regional diversity and ensure culturally responsive programming. Our advisory board includes members from partner organizations focused on serving people with disabilities and from minority ethnic groups.

In trainings and workshops, we educate staff on unconscious biases, power dynamics, and language inclusivity. Team activities foster understanding of intersecting identities and experiences within communities. Through workshops tailored for participants of all abilities, we promote showing compassion to others and speaking out against harmful attitudes.

All programming and spaces are designed to be fully accessible. We collect disaggregated data on participation and solicit regular feedback, especially from minority groups, to address any gaps and better support underserved populations.

Community outreach prioritizes inclusion, such as sensitively engaging religious leaders on SRHR and working with partners addressing barriers unique to particular ethnicities. Referral systems are strengthened for seamless access to specialized care.

Through our mentorship and empowerment focus, we aim to cultivate a new generation of diverse rural youth leaders advocating equality from within their own networks and influencing sustained progress in their areas regarding gender, disability, ethnic and other social issues. Transparency, accountability and ongoing learning are prioritized to continually strengthen our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Our business model is a hybrid between a social enterprise and nonprofit. 

Key customers: Adolescent girls in rural Tanzania. 

Beneficiaries: Girls, their families and communities in Ryora district. 

Products/services: 

• Integrated empowerment centers providing counseling, healthcare, skills workshops and more under one safe roof located in secondary schools.
• Programming focuses on SRHR education, career guidance, financial literacy and building resilience/life skills.
• Centers are staffed by local female mentors trained to offer culturally sensitive psychosocial support. 
• Partnerships strengthen referrals to specialized care and ensure continuous supply of essential items like menstrual hygiene products.

Why they need it:

Rural girls face severe systemic barriers accessing education, healthcare and opportunities due to poverty, cultural norms and gender disparities. Our holistic one-stop model directly addresses economic, social and resource constraints they navigate.

Revenue streams:

• Government and NGO grants for center set-up, staffing and core operations.
• Donations from supporting organizations invested in community development. 
• Social enterprise initiatives like agricultural cooperatives run by and benefiting students provide supplemental income.
• Cost-recovery comes from nominal healthcare/supply fees scaled according to ability to pay.

Our sustainability-oriented approach empowers our beneficiaries to thrive while leveraging funds through socially-minded partnerships, balancing impact and financial self-sufficiency over the long term to serve our mission.

Our plan for achieving financial sustainability involves diversifying our revenue streams over three phases:

Phase 1 (years 1-3): Reliance on grants and donations for start-up costs and core programming. We will pursue funding from foundations, NGOs and government grants that align with our mission. Continued fundraising will be critical as we expand services and operational capacity. 

Phase 2 (years 4-6): Introduction of social enterprises and service fees. We will pilot revenue-generating initiatives like agricultural vocational training programs, craft microbusinesses and medical cost-recovery on a small scale. Revenue and reinvestment will scale these ventures while keeping services affordable. Partnerships may provide in-kind support, further reducing costs.

Phase 3 (years 7+): Transition to self-sustainability. By this stage, social enterprises will generate the majority of operational income through partnerships, sales and value-added services. Donations will shift towards capital projects and innovation rather than core budgets. Government and community-sector cooperation will see us managing centers under performance contracts.

Throughout all phases, prudent financial management will maximize efficiency - including strategic use of local, volunteer resources where possible. Impact measurement will strengthen proposals and ensure accountability. 

As services are expanded, new income streams like facility rentals, training modules and an alumni network may contribute. Our adaptable hybrid model will leverage all funding sources sustainably to empower communities for decades to come.