New Program in Tanzania-Crochet Baby Hats

The first baby hats being made my individuals in Yulansoni, Tanzania

One of the things I wanted to do when I started teaching folks here in Tanzania to crochet was to help them make items they could use, could help others, to help their families and to possibly sell and generate income.  Recently in a discussion with the founder of Full Dimension Ministry in Tanzania, William Makali about encouraging more women to give birth at our clinic and to take advantage of our midwives and doctor on staff sparked an idea.  

Teach them how to make baby hats which everyone around here uses (they keep their babies wrapped and bundled regardless of the temperature outside).  So the idea took this shape:  as part of the class they make an newborn hat and learn how to make other sizes.  The newborn hat would be given to the clinic to be distributed to children our doctor or midwives help deliver.  
This provides many benefits starting with Tanzanians helping Tanzanians and it not being a program with outsiders making things for them.  Why is that important-for any type of ministry to really succeed it requires an approach that allows the people you are trying to help to both build themselves up and help their own community.  Despite the people of Tanzania I work with being a strong people with dedicated family lives that we should envy in the USA, they have not always had the access to items to make their lives better.  If you question the effects of being a crocheter give it a google under crochet health effect and check some of the results.

Another benefit is that it helps our medical clinic with incentive for expecting mothers to use the medical knowledge available to them and their children.  The last big benefit is that the crocheters can make sizes for older children and give, trade or sell them at their choosing.

These are the kind of programs that make me excited to be involved in mission work.  Simple, hopefully as effective as we think it will be, and integral to a community working together to make themselves stronger and better than they would be if we just did things for them.

I do want to say a big thank you for the starting needles and yarn to help kick this program off from Mauldin United Methodist Church's Prayer Shawl ministries.  This allowed us to propose this program without cost to the ministry (taking it away from other areas) or to the people wanting to learn.