Records of YMCA international work in Tanzania

In 1959 a group of men in Moshi, Tanzania formed a provisional YMCA committee with the Bishop Stephano R. Moshi as president and Reverend Dr. E. R. Danielson as the secretary. Jacob G. Mallya was elected chairman of the executive committee. In 1961 the YMCA of Sweden agreed to sponsor a Swedish fraternal secretary for five years. Tasked with setting up a self-supporting movement with its own leaders and trained secretaries, Carol. R Carlsson arrived in Moshi in 1961 and immediately began to work with the YMCA committee as its organizing secretary. By May a constitution was drawn up for the Tanzanian National YMCA. It was also decided that S. R. Moshi would become the first honorary president Right Reverend A. Stanway as the honorary vice-president and W. R. Forder as the honorary treasurer. Mallya was asked to act as chairman of the national executive committee with Forder and Carlsson as members. The Christian council of Tanzania was also asked to appoint two members of the national council.

Towards the end of 1961 the Moshi YMCA moved out of its first center in order to open a YMCA community center at Majengo. In 1963 a hostel for 36 students attending Mawenzi secondary school was opened on the request of the ministry of education. At about the same time the first preparations were being made to begin a poultry project at Nronga and Machame. The aim of this project was to teach people up in the villages in the Machame area proper poultry farming and ways of improving the family diet. Also in 1963 the YMCA was given the old sports club in the center of Moshi and activities were immediately started there for people living in that town.

In the beginning of 1962 Carlsson moved to Arusha in order to do a social survey for the Arusha town council and to start a YMCA there. The Arusha YMCA re-organized the adult education classes sponsored by the council and one of the YMCA staff members became the supervisor of the classes arranged at the Kaloleni upper primary school. The Arusha YMCA shortly spread to four centers within the Arusha region. By 1963 the Arusha region supported Arusha Central YMCA, Burka Coffee Estates YMCA, TPRI YMCA and Olmotoni YMCA while the Kilimanjaro Region held the Moshi Central YMCA, the Majengo YMCA Community Center, the Moshi YMCA Student Hostel, the Kilimanjaro Poultry Scheme at Nronga, Nkwarungo and Nshara and the West Kilimanjaro Farm Estates. The Tanzanian YMCA became a full member of the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1965.

By 1971 the YMCA in Tanzania was operating in Moshi, Dar-es-Salaam, Arusha, Tanga, Monduli, Longido, Mbeya, Dodoma, Same, Tabora, Mwanza and Ngara. The programs run were varied. There was a Christian refugee service which supplied programs that would enable the dispossessed a better chance to settle, a farm school which had 150 acres of arable land at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, a Masai project that aimed to demonstrate the cultivation of crops, provide literacy sewing and health education to the Masai people, a physical education department focusing upon theory, team games, indoor games, and swimming, civic education classes which offered history classes about Tanzania, introductions to social sciences such as statistics and economics and leadership training classes.

In 1984 the YMCA in Tanzania celebrated its 25th anniversary. At this point it operated five vocational training centers that could train young boys and girls in agriculture, leathercraft, hotel management, metal work, air conditioning and refrigeration repair, and other commercial subjects. There was also one secondary school for boys and one for girls along with seven centers for children ages five to ten that aided mothers, providing child care from morning to midday to enable them to do other work. New children’s centers in rural areas provided the children with milk, tea and food. Refugee programs supplied uprooted people with 150 houses and rural development work in Monduli, in the Masai area, where there were literacy programs, health and cookery classes, vegetable growing classes, a supply of water and lessons on crop development. There was also a small center at Pangani set up for an ecumenical youth conference and program center. As of 2010 the Tanzanian YMCA had fourteen branches in the country.

Historical Information largely adapted and quoted from the collection and from "World Alliance of YMCAs, YMCA International, Tanzania," (web, 2010, http:// www.ymca.int/where-we-work/ymcas-country-profile/africa/tanzania/)