Local Nonprofit Team Departs for Tanzania

Eleven members of Artists for World Peace (AFWP), including a team of six eye-care professionals from Connecticut and five documentarians, will board a flight at JFK Airport on Wednesday, July 30, for a two-week service trip to the village of Kibosho-Umbwe, Tanzania, near the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. There they will provide medical evaluations and treatments to the village, as well as support to the Good Hope Trust Orphanage, established by Josephine Machuwa, who has become “dada” (“sister” in Swahili), to Wendy Black-Nasta, Middletown resident and founder and executive director of Artists for World Peace, a 501 c 3.

This is Black-Nasta’s third trip to the orphanage, which the organization supports through income-generating and sustainable projects, including the purchase of pigs and chickens to improve the children’s nutritional health. Additionally, AFWP funds tuition payments and school fees for 20 of the orphans, some of whom are enrolled in the nearby prestigious Moshi Academy.

“This trip is the culmination of all we have done in the village in the past seven years,” she says. “Our travel team of 11 is really representative of the work and support of so many more friends. Fundraiser “Artists for World Peace on Broadway” helped build the health center. Our music and dance events—Dirt Floor Recording Studios Music Festival in Chester, and Celebration of Africa in the Wadsworth Mansion have helped fund the children’s education and the completion of the health center. We’re so grateful to be bringing the loving energy from our homebase in Connecticut to the people in Tanzania.”

The addition of the medical team, she says, is a key component of the trip for her. “These eye specialists will provide the first eye-care that many of the villagers have ever had. They will be working out of the local health clinic, which AFWP has helped to build and furnish. Also packed in suitcases, team members are carrying 2,500 eyeglasses, donated by the Lions’ Clubs of New England, which our doctors will provide to those in need.”

Orphanage director Machuwa has also arranged to introduce the team to the district commissioner of Moshi, through a courtesy call to his office, and she has invited him to officially launch the eye clinic on August 2.

Bicycles and soccer games will be additional highlights. Bikes for Kids, a nonprofit in Ivoryton, donated 44 bicycles, which the team will distribute. Mission Soccer, a nonprofit organization that builds soccer fields and provides soccer equipment to underprivileged and developing communities, has donated soccer balls, nets, cleats, and other equipment to the children of the Good Hope Orphanage, so a few “football matches” are on the agenda.

Members of the eye team include Roe and Raymond Dennis, a licensed optician and professor at Middlesex Community College in Middletown; and Michael and Dr. Carol Gordon, an optometrist certified in advanced ocular therapeutics and as a low vision provider of Old Saybrook, Deep River, and Guilford; and Dr. Ana Marie Gomes, of Milford.

Documentarians include two Connecticut residents, Cathy Jackman, a CPTV producer of West Hartford, and writer Cynthia Rockwell of Canton; as well as volunteer Alyssa Barratt, of Boca Raton, Fla., a student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando; German-born photographer Claudia Hehr and sound designer Miles Nasta, each living in the Harlem section of New York City.

For further information, go to www.artistsforworldpeace, where photos and blog entries will provide updates throughout the trip. The team expects to return on Aug. 17.

Photo: Dancers from the “Artists for World Peace: Celebration of Africa” held in Middletown’s Wadsworth Mansion last May offered their talents in this fundraiser that has helped support the orphanage in the village of Kibosho-Umbwe in Tanzania.