Mulimuli Community Center

What is it about?

Tanzania – the land of the Serengeti, Zanzibar and the Kilimanjaro … and one of the fastest growing countries in the world. From 2018 to 2050 the population is expected to grow from its current 50 Million to over 120 Million people in 2050! Obviously, this enormous growth brings a lot of challenges to the country.

Unarguably one of the most crucial aspects to ensure a sustainable development is to prepare the younger generations for these coming challenges and to empower them to change things for the better and to the best. However, todays unemployment rates in Tanzania (especially among the young living in urban areas) are already at alarming high levels.

Mulimuli is a community project initiated by «Teddy’s Home Hostel», a small backpacker hostel run by young Tanzanian entrepreneurs and located at the outskirts of Dar es Salaam (watch the video, to get a feeling about it!). Together with our partner company «BongoFISH» (a social agriculture business) we want to tackle unemployment in urban communities through a combined approach of tourism, farming and capacity building.

The core idea of Mulimuli is to combine our backpacker hostel with a community center – creating a place for inspiration and change.

The main activities at Mulimuli are:

• Establishment of a community farm to provide a platform for people to start their own farming trials, improve existing farming ventures and supply farming inputs and advice to the community around us
• Organizing workshops, events and leisure activities (e.g. farming workshops, cooking, playing games, dancing, music, movies etc.)
• Letting guests from the guesthouses actively participate in the community centers and experience the Tanzanian Culture (create a sustainable form of volunteering)
• Serving as a cultural and scientific exchange platform to allow students from local and foreign universities to get involved in agricultural and social research in collaboration with the local communities

Who are we?

«We» are the Mulimuli Family. A team of young Tanzanians and Europeans with diverse backgrounds, qualifications and flaws.

Let us briefly introduce ourselves:

Teddy: Young, female entrepreneur from Dar es Salaam. And yeah, she is obviously the founder of Teddy’s Home.

Selina: Cook and facility manager. She has also started her farming project in our community farm and currently owns two chickens and three goats; besides that, she is eagerly learning English –coming from a poor, rural family and having only received a very basic education Selina’s story reflects how we would like to empower especially the young people in our community.

Kenny: Environmental scientist and artist from Dar es Salaam. He is the creative soul of the team and an enthusiastic «littering fighter» (trust us, they are desperately needed in Dar!). He is excited to share his passion with others from our community in future workshops of Mulimuli.

Ignas and Olper: Our two fish farmers. They run the small fish farm (BongoFISH) in the Mulimuli garden. If you want to know something about fish, ask them!

Lilly and Severin: An Austrian girl and a Swiss guy. She a student in politics and communication (she knows how to talk and will be happy to tell you everything you want to know about the Mulimuli initiative!) and he a scientist nerd and entrepreneurial wannabe (he’d rather let the chatbot answer your questions, that will save time to be able to assist other people to build up their world-saving projects).

Mama Fidea: Young, Tanzanian entrepreneur and since a few weeks also proud mother of one. Mama Fidea is one of the founders of Mulimuli and BongoFISH, she is a professional fish farmer and especially passionate about the community farm.

Mama Remensiana: The passionate urban farmer and the Mulimuli Family’s oldest member. A strong Tanzanian woman from the books – whoever gets to know her will soon become a Mama Remensiana Fan!

Well, that sounds like a bunch of cool people, no? But why the heck do we think that we are qualified to set up a project like this and try to inspire others to do the same?

Apart from our diverse backgrounds and know-how, we all have one thing in common: Although we are young, we have quite some experience in setting things up. Each of us has either co-founded or worked in some sort of (successful and not successful) startup-project and we know what it means to go «all-in», but still somehow manage the risks («all-in» gets a different meaning if there is no social security around). We also know how failing feels and how one can deal with it and grow from things that do not work out (and honestly, they often don’t, right?).

Failing is part of the journey – at Mulimuli not only beautified stories of success and happiness will be written and told. People will also have the chance to start small things without putting their family’s existence at risk.

E.g. think of a young mother in our community who would like to earn an additional income and comes up with the idea of farming rabbits but has no space and security to do this at her home – Mulimuli will exactly be the place where she can get the needed space and advice to do so. If things do not work out,… well, nobody gets hurt. If they do, we’ll be glad to support her venture further and link her up with potential partners to build up her project to achieve a sustaining business.

Why do we need Your involvement?

The goal of our initiative is to create a self-financing project by covering costs of the Mulimuli community center with the incomes from the hostel and the community farm. We are working hard to achieve the above as soon as possible. However, as young entrepreneurs our personal budgets are still a bit limited and we are not yet able to fully cover the costs for the community center. Therefore, we initiated this crowdfunding campaign.

With your involvement, we’ll be able to reach more and more people through our community farm, cultural events and workshops, plus we will also engage more and more people from abroad and get a constructive cultural exchange going. Part of the raised funds will also be used to pay the rent of the community center for the first year and the salary of Mama Remensiana (the Chef Gardener) as well as necessary licenses to keep the hostel running. You’ll find more information about our budget in the presentation below.

But as usual, this is not all about money: Our foremost goal with this campaign is to spread the word and link up with people from all around the world – yes, you! – maybe you have long been dreaming about a journey to Africa? Maybe you got talents and passion for something you would like to share with others? Or maybe you got this same urgent feeling (as we do) to try to make the world a tiny bit of a better place?

If you have any questions or suggestions for us feel free to contact us – promised, we’ll answer any message.

Asanteni sana, karibuni Tanzania!

The Mulimuli Team