Her mother would stack up enough candles and paraffin lamps, knowing her daughter would need those to survive the long nights studying for her exams. Her parents had to put their big plans to buy land on hold.
They built a house so that they could afford to take her to a better secondary school, investing in their daughter’s education.
At the same time, they crammed into a small apartment, so small that when relatives visited, they could hardly find a chair to accommodate them. Her parents taught their daughter resilience, hard work, and compassion.
Regardless of her circumstances, while they could barely afford a decent living, her parents took in more kids from relatives to live with them, all while Tumaini had to do house chores, wake up at the crack of dawn, and make enough time to study and excel.
Looking back, she admits, her upbringing made her the multitasker she is today. She is a full-time employee as an engineer at AM Batteries, producing electrodes that are used for electric vehicles based in Billerica, Massachusetts, while at the same time running a charity marathon in her community and running an NGO in Tanzania.
This newly married lady still finds ample time with her husband; her day feels like it has more than 24 hours that others have. She laughs at that notion because her cousin has often asked her if her day has 48 hours, but she was just trained early on that one has to rise above the challenges.
Watching her parents sacrifice and work hard has instilled in her the mentality to do more given the opportunity. She feels now is the time to be impactful, at a young age, when she is yet to have children and bear more responsibilities as a mother. “I feel this is the time you can take huge risks in life, without it affecting me as much as if I had children,” she said.
Tumaini runs a unique NGO in Tanzania named ‘Sayansi Ambassadors’ that helps promote STEM learning among underprivileged children in Tanzania.
The idea was born when she was studying her undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a university in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, as an environmental engineering student. She would later switch to chemical engineering studies before taking her master’s in business management.
While she was at the campus, she got hired as an engineer ambassador. It was for college students who were tasked with taking the complex studies they were learning and simplifying them in simple terms so that they could go and explain them to children in schools and inspire them to do STEM studies.
She was so moved by how much the kids were excited by what would have been otherwise a difficult study for them to comprehend. It was at that moment that she wished she had had engineers as role models growing up.
“Nobody got to explain science hands-on when I was in primary school,” she recalled. Being a student at ‘Arusha Chini’, a government primary school in a village in Arusha. There was never a day that she got to see engineers come to her school and stimulate their brains or inspire them to take on science studies.
It was at that moment that a light bulb popped on in her head: if she couldn’t have that growing up, why can’t she be that engineer that goes back to the same primary school and inspires the children?. It was that moment that she knew that her calling was bigger than herself.
Implementing a programme of that magnitude back home in Tanzania needed financial capability that she didn’t have.
But she was not deterred; she searched for grants online, ‘Davis Projects for Peace’ grants, which fund 10,000 USD to undergraduate students to design and implement grassroots projects that promote peace.
When she was selected for the grant at the end of 2020, she was just a student with no NGO, just a passion to impact her community in Arusha. She saw herself in the little girls still in that ‘Arusha chini’ government school.
She went back to her former primary school where it all began, and she even showed the kids where she used to sit. She could see the kids’ eyes bulging when they saw Tumaini and her team demonstrate little science projects, from the bulb lighting showing them how the electrical current runs toeven teaching them how to operate a laptop.
That was the beginning of exposing these children to the science world they had never imagined. These are students who had never even seen a laptop.
Their computer students were on a blackboard with a teacher drawing the computer and teaching them from that. Having it physically placed on their desk and feeling the keyboard or connecting that bulb and watching it light up was so mind-blowing to these kids.
Tumaini saw the new hope she was bringing to the students. Suddenly what felt like a dream full of imagination was becoming a reality that these kids could see and know was possible.
She went to seven other schools in the ward where her former school was. She equipped the teachers with the tools to carry on teaching the students ever after she left so that those students would master their skills.
She intentionally started with simple experiments so that she could first make the kids fall in love with science.
The teachers called her back, conveying to her how much her experiments with students had drastically changed the kids’ lives; suddenly the zeal to do science was awakened in students who had shown no previous interest.
The teachers informed her of computer science studies, but they said they still use the drawings on a blackboard to teach that. In an environment where the students’ parents can barely even afford to put food on the table.
Parents have no other option but to prioritise providing basic needs to their children; certainly, fancy computers do not fall under that category. The teachers asked Tumaini if she could help in making the computer studies practical, bringing computers that the children can see, touch, and learn from.
As she was heading back to the United States, she left with the teachers’ request at the back of her mind. “That moved my heart so much. These are the teachers who interact with students every day and saw the need to help these kids and share it with me. It weighed on my heart,” she said.
When she was back in the US, she was connected to The WPI Women’s Impact Network (WIN), a philanthropic community of alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and friends of Worcester Polytechnic Institute who pool their resources to support projects that advance women in STEM.
Tumaini had seen the scale of the need back home, so she boldly asked for 25,000 USD, a hefty sum, but she knew how many lives that money would change. Her now-husband assured her it was the right move.
“He told me to shoot for the moon; if you miss, you will land on one of the stars,” she mentioned. She draughted the proposal, and she aimed to go back to Arusha and make sure she had enough computers for the students so that they could comfortably learn. She wanted to provide the best laptops for the kids and not some cheap knockoff ones.
She also wanted to recruit Tanzanian university students to her team. The students who were also studying STEM in Tanzania would join her team, pay them an allowance, and also inspire the primary school students she was working with.
“Some of these university students had income, and the allowance I was giving them was a lifeline,” she said. At that point, Tumaini knew that what she was doing wasn’t just about her, but it had a broader impact.
As she was expanding, she had to register the ‘Sayansi Ambassadors’ as an NGO and formalise her projects. It was not an easy task; it surprisingly took two years to register the organisation. “It is so disheartening and discouraging for diasporas if trying to give back to communities meets so much resistance,” she said.
She was learning how to navigate the world of NGOs’ financial auditor reports and other documentation, but she persevered. In some cases, she has to get money from her own pockets to get things going.
When it was all said and done, she secured another grant which enabled her to extend her reach. At ‘Sayansi Ambassador’, she didn’t want to confine her focus to only engineering but the whole broad science world as a holistic umbrella.
Catching these students when they are still young is how you can mould them into scientists of the future, she said.
If Tanzania is to attain the dream of an industrialised nation, we need more scientists, and we have to mould them now, she said. “As a patriot, I want to see my country develop, and that’s why I am bringing back my talent.
Whatever I learn from the US, I have to take it back and teach Tanzanian children back home,” she said. The 4.0 GPA graduate at the top of her class, Tumaini brings valuable knowledge back home.
So far they have empowered 3872 students and worked with 21 schools in their 4 years of service, and they plan to do so much more as they expand across Tanzania.
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