Something to smile about
A week with Cheka Sana in Mwanza, Tanzania

Many of you will have heard the story of Dira, the focus of our BBC Radio 4 appeal in April, read so wonderfully by the actor, Maxine Peake.

Thanks to your extraordinary generosity, we raised £46,000 and were able to share with a whole new audience the impact of Cheka Sana’s StreetBorn programme, which works with girls and young women aged 15 to 21 on the streets of Mwanza.

In May, along with my colleague Niusha Russo, I was able to visit Cheka Sana and spend a week there, meeting some of the girls and young women they work with, including Dira. What we saw was transformative and life-affirming — a testimony to what becomes possible with the right support, the right training and people who believe in you.

Already laughing

After 24 hours of travel, we stepped off the plane into a tiny airport and straight into the warmth of Mwanza. Waiting for us were not one but three of Cheka Sana’s staff: Vanessa, the director; Leah, StreetBorn’s programme manager; and Gloria, StreetBorn’s social worker — and this on a Sunday, typical of the hospitality shown to us again and again by Amos Trust partners across the world.

Together we can

On our first morning, we visit one of the women’s empowerment group meetings. On the walk from the car, we pass the hospital where many of the girls receive prenatal care. A glimpse through the window reveals just how basic the facilities are.

We walk into a crowded, chattering room. Girls on the floor, others standing, more arriving. At the back, a young woman is swaying gently with a baby on her back. Small children are sitting with their mothers, entirely at ease.

This group meets three times a week for empowerment sessions, sexual health training, life skills, business training and self-defence. The energy is warm, chaotic and alive — this is clearly a supportive and friendly group. I’m not surprised to hear that their motto is “Together we can.”

As with all meetings in Tanzania, we begin with greetings in a kind of call and response, including empowering chants and refrains.

The session is led by Happiness (all names have been changed), the elected group leader of the self-named Angels Group. Happiness is training to become a tailor and hopes one day to be a designer. Others in the group are training in beauty and health or secretarial skills. Happiness stands and reads a report on behalf of the women. She tells us:

“We have achieved a lot. We’ve increased our self-esteem, even when talking to difficult people. We know how to manage our time. Everyone is committed to what we are doing and we are doing it with our heart… We have hope now. Before Cheka Sana, we had no hope of a life. But now we have hope and we can continue with our future.” Happiness — Angels group leader

Then comes the mirror game, one of the many activities they use to build the girls’ self-confidence. Leah, StreetBorn’s programme manager, asks each woman to look into a mirror and say the strengths she sees in herself. Some shy away or hesitate at first, but many more play up to their audience and friends. One by one, they speak.

“I am charming, cheerful. I’m the mother of two children. I love myself.”

“I am strong. I’m funny. I am a fighter.”

“I am very confident. I’ve reached a lot of dreams through hairdressing.”

“I am a survivor. I’ve learned to achieve. I don’t want to be vulnerable. I don’t want to fail in my life. I am a fighter.”

Each pose and declaration is met with laughter and clapping. These are young women, often teenage mothers, who not long ago had no sense of their own worth at all.

Afterwards, the girls tell us what it means to be part of the StreetBorn programme. Alongside the new business skills they are learning, they speak about how much they have learned about sexual health and how much safer they feel thanks to self-defence classes.

But what really comes across is how important they feel it is to have a place back within their families and communities. Being accepted and valued at home gives them the confidence to believe they can provide for their families in the future. I am struck by the pride these young women carry, most of whom have been working as sex workers until recently.

“I feel very good because I have been waiting for this a long time. I will be happy because I will be able to support my children and my parents. Right now I feel very strong and the community sees I have changed.” Nehma, trainee hairdresser

Agnes tells us: “My family never believed in me, saying it was a waste of time. They did not support me. But now they see I have changed.”

As we leave this warm and funny group of girls, all wanting to take selfies with us, I am delighted that we will see many of them again when we visit them on their apprenticeships.

Jessica

The following day we meet some of the women now in the second and third years of Cheka Sana’s programme — meaning they have already set up their own businesses with Cheka Sana’s help, including equipment and six months’ rent to get started.

We visit Jessica and Mary on day two. They are part of the self-named Winners Empowerment group and are in their second year, and have been running their hair and beauty business for almost a year. Where possible, Cheka Sana puts apprentices together for support and friendship, paying the rent on the business for six months — after that, it’s up to them. When we arrive, they are sitting together and Jessica is styling Mary’s hair. When business is quiet, they say, they can have fun together, and I’m reminded that despite having children and businesses, these girls are still so young.

Jessica has two small children. She tells us about her life before meeting Cheka Sana. After her mother left when she was seven, she lived for a while with her father, who was an alcoholic, until she moved to her aunt’s home. It was while living with her aunt that she first went to the streets to earn money for school materials, keen to do well in school — but soon she found herself there permanently. Not surprisingly, she finds it painful to share this, and she gets tearful, as do we.

She moves on to speak of how her life is now. She tells us that when she met Cheka Sana she was pregnant and very keen to join the programme, how much she enjoyed the training, and how they helped reunite her with her family — providing family therapy sessions and one-to-one time with family members. She tells us how much she enjoys her work and wants to build up her materials and design skills.

“Now I can use my own hands to earn money. Before, my life was very hard — I was not able to get food. Right now I am doing my life well and I have different opportunities, growing my business. Now I have enough to eat and can also provide food and school materials for my family.” Jessica

We also visit Samira, who has a small booth with her sewing machine on a busy road in a fishing community. Our visit with Samira strikes me in many ways. Cheka Sana’s wraparound care — providing health screening and enabling young mothers to access health services for their children — has been transformative for the lives of Samira and her three young children.

Samira is 26 and has a three-year-old son and one-year-old twins. When Cheka Sana first met her, she was working as a sex worker. A customer had attacked her with a bottle, leaving her with a head injury and long-term mental health problems. Through Cheka Sana’s health screening, she discovered that both she and her son were HIV positive. Her twins, thanks to the healthcare guidance she received, are HIV negative.

She graduated from StreetBorn in May 2024. When we meet her, she is sitting with one of her babies on her knee, her older son standing close by. She is shy and speaks hesitatingly as she tells us how Cheka Sana has helped her.

We learn from Leah that, alongside her tailoring training, Samira was also trained as one of the programme’s self-defence trainers while at Cheka Sana.

“I feel at peace and happy teaching self-defence. Cheka Sana gave me training to overcome my challenges and now I am earning from what I am doing. Earning helps me buy food and nappies and things at home. My family is proud of me.” Samira

On the streets

Later in the week we join Cheka Sana’s street outreach team, on a night visit and then at dawn. Arriving at around 10.30pm, we meet two young women sitting on a pavement corner. One has her four-year-old son with her; the other a two-month-old baby strapped to her chest. They have been talking to outreach worker Daoudy for six months, and in two weeks’ time they hope to join StreetBorn’s new cohort — one training in tailoring, the other in hair and beauty.

A little further along, we meet a small group of children, seven to fourteen years old, though most looked younger. One girl tells us she had been sent to the streets by her mother to earn money for school materials, because children without them are made to sit at the back of the class. When Daoudy asks who would like Cheka Sana to talk to their families, every single hand goes up.

While StreetBorn supports young women aged 15 to 21, the wider outreach project works with younger children and their families — reuniting them, providing therapy, getting children back into school and into a Child Rights programme, as parents join parenting groups and savings and loans schemes to help them build their way out of poverty.

On our final day, the team shares with us their five-year vision: to see far fewer girls and women involved in sex work on the streets of Mwanza. I can see that the work with younger girls and their families is central to that. It recognises a vital truth: to protect a child, you have to strengthen the whole community around them.

Nothing illustrates this better than the role of Cheka Sana’s Community Champions. Alongside their outreach team, the Community Champions are trained volunteers — often street vendors or motorcycle taxi drivers — who build trust with children and women on the streets and keep outreach workers informed. Seeing how many members of the community are quietly watching out for the most vulnerable was one of the unexpected highlights of the week.

On the way back to our hotel, we drove past the football stadium where so many of the women we had met used to work — a reminder of just how vital Cheka Sana’s work is.

Dira — then and now

Finally, we meet Dira, the focus of our BBC Radio 4 appeal.

Dira was pregnant and working on the streets when Cheka Sana found her. She joined the StreetBorn programme and now runs her own tailoring shop.

Having spent a long time working on the appeal, hoping that people like you would respond to her story, it was wonderful to finally meet her. When we arrive, Dira is waiting for us in her small shop, a cool sanctuary from the afternoon heat. She greets us shyly and bustles around finding somewhere for us to sit among the mannequins and sewing machines. Dira's son plays quietly in the corner.

Dira is in her third and final year with Cheka Sana and clearly has a lovely relationship with Gloria, her social worker. She has a steady stream of customers, including several students, and is now selling fabric too. Proudly, she tells us her earnings cover food, healthcare and her son's nursery fees, and allow her to contribute fully to the home she shares with her husband, a farmer, and their son.

“Cheka Sana helped me a lot. They paid for my vocational training and gave me a sewing machine. Right now I am earning money. They empowered me. I know how to make clothes. I wish to support more young people like me.” Dira

Walking away from Dira’s shop, I reflect on how wonderful it is to see her so settled, quietly confident and in control of her life. I think of all the women I have met this week — the change visible in each of them as they speak of the past and then of the present, the pride of their families, the love of their chosen work, whether that’s tailoring, hairdressing or computers. But most of all I think of the laughter and chanting of those first-year girls on the day we met them, of their greetings and pride as they showed us round their studios. And I think of the women they will become — Dira, Jessica and Samira — earning a living, supporting their families and proud of who they are.

What this week showed me

Cheka Sana means to laugh or smile a lot in Swahili. Spend a week with them and you understand why. The laughter and smiles are real, earned, not performed. It’s the sound of young women who have come through extraordinary hardship and found, on the other side, something they didn’t expect. Themselves. Women starting businesses and teaching others, strong, independent women supporting not only themselves but their families — women who should be so very proud.

Your support makes our work with girls and young women on the streets possible, whether with Cheka Sana in Tanzania, Karunalaya in India or uMthombo in South Africa. To help more girls and young women, please donate here.