Mandate eNewsletter, 2008 - Issue No. 3

A Different Type of Classroom in Tanzania
by Rachel Miedema

Mama Mudy is a nominally Muslim woman who claims to believe in Jesus but does not have the courage to convert to Christianity, as it would trivialize her marriage to a Muslim man. Mama Mudy supports herself and her only son without much help from her husband. Struggling to survive, she has endeavored to start over ten small businesses, including selling perfume, boiling peanuts, and selling fabric, but she has faced many challenges along the way. She never gives up though. I have never known anyone who is as innovative and determined as Mama Mudy.

Mama Mudy is just one of the many women I was privileged to interact with this summer while in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on my required research internship for my major in international Community Development at Covenant College. I came to Covenant because of the Community Development major, and it has really challenged my assumptions about working with the economically poor. Originally I was supposed to go to Kenya to do follow-up research examining some of the Chalmers Center’s work there. However, due to internal violence in Kenya, I had to find somewhere else to go. After many meetings, my advisor, Dr. Russell Mask, was able to connect me with missionaries from ReachGlobal, a church-planting organization in Tanzania which was interested in the Chalmers Center and microfinance work. My research proposal quickly came together, focusing on finding out about the microfinance resources in a district of Dar es Salaam so that the missionaries could either refer people to the existing organizations or start a microfinance initiative on their own if the existing resources were insufficient.

One of the most exciting parts about the prospect of living in Dar was that there was a 2006 alumna of Covenant’s Community Development major, Hayden Hill, already living there with whom I was able to live. Hayden is working for Mission to the World and is also a member of the Chalmers Center’s Global Fellowship of Trainers. Her work includes offering training in microfinance and in small business development principles. I learned so much from Hayden this summer. It was a huge blessing to live with someone who shared many of the same ideas about poverty and development as I. This gave me somebody to share ideas with and to ask questions about my research. It was also a great experience because I got to go with Hayden to observe many of her community-level microfinance meetings, where I learned a lot about applying what I had learned in the classroom at Covenant to real life.

Hayden taught two groups of poor women per week various microfinance principles based on the Chalmers Center’s materials. We would gather on mats outside of the women’s houses and they would eagerly listen to Hayden as she taught them about budgeting, small business management, and the good news of the kingdom of God. It was astonishing to me how these basic principles could help these women so much because they had never heard anything like them before. Like Mama Mudy, many of the women in these groups had made numerous attempts at small businesses but had come across many obstacles that hindered them from being successful.

As well as being poor economically, the women also struggled from spiritual poverty. Many of the women in these groups were Muslims or nominal Christians. To hear Bible stories integrating faith with real-life struggles really helped them to gain a better understanding of the Bible and its implications for their lives.

When I was not working with Hayden and observing her meetings, I conducted research in the district of Vingunguti, one of the poorest areas in Dar. Throughout the summer I carried out a myriad of interviews and conducted a survey to find out what services people used to save money and to receive loans. By the end of the summer I discovered that eight Microfinance Institutions were operating in the district, that 57% of the people surveyed had participated in a Rotating Savings and Credit Association, a local financial system where members’ savings are rotated between members to obtain a lump sum of money, and that 73% saved money.

After obtaining all of my data, the greatest difficulty for me came at the end of the summer, when I had to come up with suggestions to give to my host organization about what to do with all of the information I had collected. The resource that was most helpful in helping me to find a solution was the Chalmers Center’s Handbook for Promoting Church-Centered Savings and Credit Associations. This handbook was a guide to me in educating my hosts about how to start church-centered savings and credit associations, which I thought was the best option for them to connect their church planting work with holistic microfinance work. Hayden had talked extensively to my host missionaries before my arrival about the work of the Chalmers Center. After presenting my data at the end of the summer, I think my hosts were excited about the possibility of using the handbook to pursue using savings and credit associations as a ministry.

The Chalmers Center has had a large impact on me during my time at Covenant. Chalmers’ handbooks and work done across the world has permeated the classroom and provided for real examples and stories to illustrate and reinforce the ideas and theories that we learn about. I really respect my professors not only for their work at the College and their many experiences abroad, but also for their work at the Chalmers Center; they are an endless source of information concerning our major courses as well as community development work done around the world. As I look towards the future I know that I want to do international development work as a career, although I don’t specifically know right now what that will look like. I am so privileged to have gotten an education at Covenant in Community Development, a major which is offered at so few schools. I am especially fortunate that my education reached beyond the classroom, giving me the chance to participate in extending the Chalmers Center’s work in Africa.

Rachel Miedema of Lincolnton, NC is a senior majoring in international Community Development. Upon graduation in May, she would like to move Washington DC to pursue a career in international development.

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.

12/01/08