Grant Proposals & Projects

Malaika Kids grew from the heart-warming efforts of a number of people in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who could no longer stand by and watch the needs of desperate orphans go unmet. The organization’s development can be traced back to when Malaika Kids Founder, Jamilla Manji- Koch visited her family home in 1998 after living in the Netherlands for many years. Jamilla found the house full of children that her mother, Najma Manji, had taken in from the street. Every day, Najma worked to help as many children as possible, enlisting the help of other women to pass out food and take children in need of medical attention to the hospital. The tragic consequences of the AIDS epidemic in Africa were everywhere in Dar es Salaam, and Jamilla found homeless children begging for money, eating garbage, and sleeping on the street. 

For five years, Jamilla and her husband financially supported her mother’s efforts. However, upon adopting her nieces and nephews after her sisters died of AIDS, Najma had no more room in her house to shelter street children. With the devastating impact of HIV and AIDS hitting closer and closer to home, the decision to create Malaika Kids swiftly followed. In February 2004, the organization acquired a house in the city and prepared it to shelter the first of many children in need of a home. Malaika Kids is now a growing international organization with fundraising branches in the Netherlands, the UK and the United States supporting the efforts for expansion in Tanzania. 

The facilitation of Malaika Kids’ international boards and funding efforts are coordinated entirely by volunteers. The organization has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in the USA and charity status in the UK and Netherlands. Activities on the ground are managed by Najma Manji, Chief Executive of Malaika Kids Tanzania, with a full staff of passionate individuals contributing to the organization. 

Three programs are currently being implemented to save these children from their circumstances, they are: the national Relatives Support Program, the Children’s Reception Home in Dar es Salaam, and the Children’s Village in Mkuranga. 

The first of our programs, the Relatives Support Program, is based on a core tenet of Tanzanian culture: the family unit is paramount. We strongly believe that growing up in a family-oriented home provides the best future for Tanzanian orphans. Consequently, we spend up to two years working to place a child in foster care with his or her relatives, provided the family dynamic is nurturing and supportive. Our outreach begins when government officers qualify vulnerable children as orphans and place them under the care of Malaika Kids. When we begin the process of locating relatives, children receive loving care and stability through our second program, the Children's Reception Home in Dar es Salaam. 

Partners for Andean Community Health’s “Sight for Kids Ecuador” program is designed to create an ongoing effort to affordably and efficiently deliver pediatric ophthalmology care to underserved children in Ecuador. Through USIAD’s Child Blindness program, Partners for Andean Community Health (PACH) and its in-country partner FIBUSPAM aim to improve access to quality ophthalmology screening and treatment for school-aged children in the Andean region of Ecuador. The overarching goal of this three-tiered program is to reduce childhood blindness in the Ecuadorian Andes. 

Our program works to achieve the following three objectives:
• To build the capacity of FIBUSPAM’s clinical staff in pediatric ophthalmology by providing training programs and constructing and sustaining a national and international referral network;
• To train FIBUSPAM’s community health workers and local teachers on how to perform vision screening for refractive error and amblyopia using a mobile screening application; and
• To screen 15,000 children for refractive error, dispensing prescription glasses, and providing clinical and surgical treatment or referrals for treatment as appropriate.

Ecuador has one of the highest proportions of ethnic minorities in all of South America, with indigenous minorities comprising 45% of the population. Approximately 90% of the rural population in Ecuador is indigenous, and almost all live in poverty. These disadvantages translate into a comparatively worse health status, as rural, uninsured, and poor populations in Ecuador have the most limited access to healthcare. Indigenous Ecuadorians are more likely to suffer from both communicable and non-communicable diseases compared to mestizos, but are only half as likely to access preventive health services. Many children in rural Ecuador never receive vision screening during their primary or secondary school years. While there is a great need for vision health services, the supply for such services is relatively low due to a lack of trained clinical ophthalmologists. Only a few hundred ophthalmologists practice in Ecuador, and less than 25% have the equipment and supplies needed for surgery. The average cost of cataract surgery in Ecuador equates to over 500% of the average monthly income and the average costs of vision screening and prescription glasses is 50% of the average monthly salary.