About Boresha Maisha Projects
The saying "Boresha Maisha" means "improving lives" in Swahili, and that is exactly what we strive to achieve through every one of our volunteer programs. We believe international volunteering should create genuine opportunities for both communities and volunteers, building meaningful cultural exchange while supporting long-term, sustainable development.
Choosing a volunteer organisation can be overwhelming. With hundreds of organisations offering placements across Africa, it can be difficult to know which programs genuinely benefit local communities. Boresha Maisha Projects was created to challenge the traditional "voluntourism" model by developing ethical, community-led volunteer programs that respond to real local needs. Rather than creating short-term projects for volunteers, we partner directly with grassroots organisations to support initiatives that continue creating positive impact long after volunteers return home.
Program Overview
Our Women's Empowerment Program places volunteers within one of Arusha's most inspiring community organisations—a holistic women's refuge and rehabilitation centre dedicated to supporting women and young girls as they rebuild their lives following experiences of domestic violence, human trafficking, exploitation, forced marriage, sexual abuse, homelessness, and other forms of gender-based violence.
Rather than simply providing emergency accommodation, the centre focuses on long-term recovery by creating pathways towards independence, education, employment, and self-confidence. Every service offered is designed to help women regain stability while equipping them with the practical skills needed to create sustainable futures for themselves and their children.
As a volunteer, you'll become part of this supportive community, working alongside local staff across a variety of programs that promote education, economic empowerment, childcare, vocational development, and emotional wellbeing.
Target Community
The centre supports women and young girls between approximately 13 and 24 years of age, alongside many of their young children who live within the refuge while their mothers participate in rehabilitation and vocational training.
Every woman arrives with a unique story. Some have escaped abusive relationships, while others have experienced trafficking, forced labour, early marriage, or significant social disadvantage. Despite these challenges, the centre creates an environment built around dignity, opportunity, resilience, and hope—helping each individual work towards long-term independence.
The Challenge
Across many communities in Tanzania, women continue to face significant barriers to education, employment, financial independence, and equal opportunity. Survivors of violence and exploitation often face additional challenges including trauma, social stigma, interrupted education, and limited pathways into stable employment.
While immediate safety is essential, long-term empowerment requires much more than shelter alone. Sustainable recovery depends upon education, vocational skills, economic opportunity, emotional support, and the confidence to rebuild an independent future.
The centre addresses these challenges through an integrated rehabilitation model that empowers women to become financially independent while supporting the healthy development of their children.
Our Partnership Approach
We work directly alongside the centre's dedicated Tanzanian team to strengthen existing programs rather than replacing local services. Volunteers provide additional capacity, fresh ideas, and individual support while respecting the expertise of local professionals and the personal journeys of each woman.
The centre operates several interconnected initiatives, allowing volunteers to contribute across different areas depending on community needs, their interests, and their experience. This creates a dynamic placement where every day offers new opportunities to make a meaningful contribution.
Your Role & Hands-On Activities
- Women's Rehabilitation & Wellbeing: Build supportive relationships with women through conversation, group activities, mentoring, confidence-building exercises, and companionship while always maintaining professionalism and confidentiality.
- Business Development & Entrepreneurship: Assist women participating in vocational training, small business development, financial literacy activities, product creation, and employment readiness programs designed to create long-term financial independence.
- Childcare & Early Learning: Support the centre's on-site childcare facility by assisting local educators with creative learning activities, educational games, storytelling, arts and crafts, and early childhood development for the children living within the refuge.
- Teacher Training Support: Work alongside women completing Montessori-inspired teacher training, helping develop classroom resources, lesson activities, educational materials, and practical teaching experience.
- English & Life Skills Education: Help facilitate conversational English, literacy, communication skills, digital literacy, and confidence-building activities that improve future employment opportunities.
- Community Engagement: Assist with workshops focusing on health, wellbeing, human rights, leadership, women's empowerment, and life skills while adapting activities to meet the needs of each group.
What You'll Learn & Gain
- Women's Empowerment & Community Development: Gain firsthand experience supporting holistic rehabilitation and gender equality initiatives within a community-led organisation.
- Trauma-Informed Practice: Develop a deeper understanding of ethical volunteering, cultural sensitivity, confidentiality, and working respectfully alongside vulnerable communities.
- Cross-Cultural Communication: Build meaningful relationships while learning about Tanzanian culture, social systems, and community development approaches.
- Teaching & Facilitation Skills: Strengthen your ability to deliver workshops, educational activities, mentoring sessions, and confidence-building programs.
- Professional Development: Gain valuable experience for careers in psychology, counselling, occupational therapy, social work, education, international development, community services, gender studies, human rights, and public health.
- Personal Growth: Leave with greater confidence, resilience, cultural awareness, and a genuine understanding of how sustainable, community-led development can transform lives.
Turn Your Volunteer Experience Into an Accredited Diploma
Your time volunteering can become much more than an unforgettable experience. Alongside your placement, you have the opportunity to complete an internationally recognised accredited diploma, built entirely around the work you're already doing in Tanzania. With no exams and only a small amount of additional work completed online throughout your programme, you'll graduate with a recognised qualification that can strengthen your CV, support university applications and, in many countries, even contribute towards academic credit.
Managing Your Expectations: The Reality of Volunteering
Whilst we do our best to be as accurate as possible with what to expect on your program, the nature of volunteering is fundamentally about coming to one of the most challenged parts of the world, learning to understand the barriers and challenges surrounding community development, and then being flexible, adaptable, and proactive in working on solutions to how you can be of best benefit during your time there.
Volunteering is, more than anything, a learning experience—so please always expect the unexpected. It's not a curated or meticulously planned travel experience. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You might find that some community members are incredibly welcoming from day one, eager to have you lead activities and drive initiatives. Others may be more skeptical or hesitant to have you heavily involved right away, preferring to continue with their established ways of doing things.
Don't let this worry you, and don't be quick to assume you're in the wrong place. Take the time to adapt to a new culture and its challenges. Focus first and foremost on building rapport with those you're working with—get to know the students, teachers, NGO staff, and community members. Show respect, demonstrate that you're not there to immediately change their ways, and then slowly and respectfully introduce ideas about how you could be better involved, support classroom management, or share the workload.
If you find you're not doing what you expected, please lean on our coordinators for support—there is almost always a solution, and that's exactly what they're there for.
Ultimately, our volunteers are the ones who drive all of our initiatives as an organization. Our core focus is on capacity building and making sustainable improvements through sharing ideas, skills, and knowledge. As such, we cannot always provide a pre-set, specifically structured experience. We can, however, guide, support, and equip you along the way.
The volunteers who are flexible, open-minded, adaptable, willing to work through challenges, and take the most initiative in their programs are always the ones who have the best and most enriching experiences!
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Age 18+
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