Sustainable Development Goals

More Africa wants to professionalize its project from 2020 onwards. This means that we will work with sustainable development goals.

Ambitions

More Africa’s main goal is to become completely self-sufficient over the next five years.
In 2019, we opened “More Africa Guesthouse” at our old location in the village of Paje.
The guesthouse is non-profit, which means that all income after salary payments of the staff, goes directly to the project. In this way, tourists contribute directly to the project through their stay. Unfortunately, due to various factors which we would like to share with you, the guesthouse is not sustainable in its current form.

Why is it not sustainable now?
As described, we would like to make the guesthouse sustainable. To explain how we want to achieve this in the future, we first want to share with you the current situation. This is as follows:
In 2020 the school became too small. It was impossible to grow at the old location where it was impossible to expand in terms of construction, because this land is rented from a landowner.
In 2021 we therefore bought land (under our own management) in the village of Jambiani and realized a school and staff building on it with the help of funds and a collaboration with Wilde Ganzen Netherlands. The school moved from the old (Paje) to the new (Jambiani) location in June 2022. The new location is about 4km from the old location and has a perfect location on the main road and 400m from the beach.
In a maximum of 2,5 years the lease will expire on our old location (Paje) where the guesthouse is still located. We would like to realize the NGO (the school) and the social enterprise (the guesthouse) at the same location.
This is more sustainable for the future, since our new land in Jambiani has been bought and is therefore under our own management. We are no longer dependent on a landowner, on monthly rent that has to be paid and on a place where we could not grow anymore in terms of construction. The new location is also big enough to realize a sustainable future for our children and youth.

Future of the guesthouse
The next step is to move the guesthouse to the new location, so we can continue our good work and eventually become self-sufficient. This is because in the future the income from the guesthouse will ensure the continued existence of the school. We want to offer our young people who have outgrown school a safe (work) place, where they can develop themselves and increase their self-reliance.
We want to do this through the “More Africa Academy”, where the young people are trained for a workplace / daytime activities, each at its own level and according to its capabilities. As a side effect, we want to break the taboo on limitations within the community. We hope to create an accessible place for the children, international guests and the local community,

The realization of a new guesthouse is important for the future and survival of the project. Below we show you what the main goals are:
Location
Our new location is close to the sea, so we can attract more tourists than at our old location. In addition, our new location is right on the mainroad, which makes it easy for people to come and “walk in”. The land is in the name of the NGO, so we do not have a lease with a landowner. The land is ours.

Self-sufficient and sustainable
An important goal, is that the guesthouse generates the income for the school. All profits from the guesthouse go directly to the school and the children. In this way we can run a self-sustainable project and we are no longer dependent on donations from third parties. In this way we can generate a sustainable future for both the project and our children and staff.

Day care and (work) experience places for young people with a disability

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR US: we can also offer our children and young adults a safe place when they get older.
We can thereby increase the independence and self-reliance of our children and youth.
There is no safety net for children with disabilities; More Africa is the only school on Zanzibar that offers special education, day care, medical care and physiotherapy to children with disabilities. However, these kids also get older. At the moment we have two 16+ kids and in addition we have a number of 12 year olds who cannot go to secondary school because of their disability. In our new school we have built a workshop/atelier, so that we can teach the children a profession (bikeshop, soap making, cooking and sewing). In addition, the oldest boys are currently working in the guesthouse. We teach them to serve drinks, but they also work in the garden, open the gate when guests arrive etc. In the future we want to further train our 16+ kids in the guesthouse and offer them work/daytime
activities. In this way, their days are spent meaningfully and they do not end up on the street or “locked up” in the house.
What we want to create is comparable to the “brownies & downies” concept in the Netherlands, but then extended to all aspects of a running guesthouse and restaurant. In addition, not only “downies” but all our children deserve a safe (work) place, appropriate to their capabilities.

Employment of adults with disabilities in the community
We are currently working with a deaf chef and a visually impaired bartender in our guesthouse. We want to expand this in the future, in our new, private place. In this way we want to distinguish ourselves from all other places and hotels.
These employees come from the surrounding villages and have difficulty finding work because of their disabilities. We want to offer them, together with our own youth, a safe learning/working place.
We want to offer guests a unique experience and give locals with fewer opportunities a safe place to work, so they too can be part of the community. Through the principle of Community Based Tourism our employees and guests can meet and learn from each other.

Taboo
An important side effect of our work will be that the taboo on limitations within the local, but also the international, community can be broken. By empowering young people with disabilities, showing others (and themselves) what they are capable of, will create
involvement among people. It will open eyes, build bridges and widen paths for our young adults. People will recognize that these young adults actually have potential. In this way we will remove the taboo on the fact that these young people “can’t do anything, are crazy or can’t participate in society”. Not only with the local population, but also with international guests who visit our project. This allows our young adults to be a valuable addition to society. Mutual respect, building bridges, working together and learning together is the key to a safe working and learning environment.

Sustainable, Reponsible and& Community Based Tourism
Because we are primarily an NGO, a foundation/good cause, we also want to communicate this to not only our guests, but also to the rest of the island. Sustainable tourism, responsible tourism and community based tourism are therefore important motives. We want to propagate this by the above mentioned points; people donate directly to the project by staying with us and we offer work (experience) places for people with disabilities within our guesthouse and restaurant. In addition, we want to convey to our guests that we live here together as one big family. A place where mutual understanding and trust is of paramount importance. Where people are allowed to make mistakes in order to learn from them. A place where we teach our guests about the culture, customs, values and traditions of the island. Through this we try to reduce the negative effects of tourism and offer people a real and unique experience.
Zanzibar has a rich history and in the near past, even as late as the 1960s slavery was a big topic. We want to tell our guests stories, inform them.
In addition, Zanzibar is rich in 101 excursions. Every hotel offers the same excursions. Very nice of course, but the umpteenth
Dolphin Hunt is not our thing. We find it much nicer to let our guests experience the “local life”. So we offer “off the beaten track”
experiences. Think of the local way of making coconut oil, making baskets from palm leaves, a cooking course where you learn to make local chapati or a cultural “treasure hunt” through the village. All this guided by our own staff and young people with disabilities. In this way you come into contact with the local population and you can learn from each other.