Connecting Us to Africa’s Untold Stories, One T-Shirt at a Time

News

Connecting Us to Africa’s Untold Stories, One T-Shirt at a Time

YOBO
November 22nd, 2011

Credit: Ross Lohr

By Anna Derby,

Whether it is through a children’s book or the multi-billion dollar global used-clothing trade, Ross Lohr believes the key to successful economic development lies in creating connections.

Ross Lohr runs two organizations which, at first glance, couldn’t be more different. As an undergraduate studying economics at Boston University, he won a grant to start the Newton Tanzania Collaborative, now known as NTC. The story of his work there – the slow, resource-intensive process of building relationships between schools in rural Tanzania and suburban Boston – is not likely to go viral any time soon. But his second enterprise, Project Repat, is what Lohr calls “a sticky idea.” He and co-founder Sean Hewens bring vintage t-shirts back from secondhand markets in Kenya, stamp them with the Project Repat logo and sell them to eager hipsters. One-hundred percent of the proceeds from t-shirt sales go back to their nonprofits. The idea demands attention and within months of launching Repat, Lohr found himself being interviewed on Fox News. He and Hewens were featured on Good.com and in Boston Magazine. Suddenly, a side project that stemmed from the frustration that they had experienced running small NGOs had become a real business with the potential to do a lot of good, and quickly.

NTC

The community-building work of NTC isn’t necessarily what most would consider glamorous. Lohr built NTC on the principle was that personal connection should be a foundational element of economic development efforts. The first connections Lohr created through NTC were between schools in Newton, Massachusetts and Kwala, Tanzania. As the project has grown, NTC continues to work in Kwala, but has expanded outside of Newton to other communities in the United States. The primary goals of the work in Kwala are promoting literacy and improving graduation rates. To this end, NTC funds and builds libraries, provides textbooks and has built a computer lab in cooperation with Smallbean, the NGO run by Project Repat cofounder Sean Hewens. NTC also runs a scholarship program for girls who would otherwise have no way to attend school.

This is the kind of development work that takes long hours on the ground and quantifiable results can be slow to come. It takes endless grant-writing and frequent appeals to donors to support the projects. NTC has achieved a number of measurable outcomes: students are passing exams at the primary and secondary school levels. Girls who would have dropped out are continuing on to higher education and becoming teachers. Kwala Secondary School became the first government school in Tanzania with internet access. But some of the results that mean the most to Lohr are harder to report to donors. He cites the changes he sees in the kids in the community. “I used to walk down the street in this community and kids would come up to me and ask for money. Now they are asking for books or to be read to. I know change is being made. I feel it when I’m there.”

Lohr believes the connections made by NTC are also important for elementary kids in the US. “These are kids who are just starting to understand that there is more to the world than themselves and what they are doing. It’s introducing them to a different culture.” The hope is that this connection will give them a different perspective on Africa, changing some of the usual stereotypes. “Everything you hear about Africa is negative, negative, negative.” But by connecting the third graders with Tanzanian students, “these kids realize ‘Oh, there are kids over there too and they’re playing and they’re drawing and they’re doing the same things that I’m doing.’” Lohr sees the personal connection as vital, because most stories coming from Africa tend to be so focused on what is wrong there. “Africa has people. Which is what we fail to realize and it’s sad. They are amazing people, but we only get one thing from the media.”

Building these meaningful relationships is central to NTC’s mission, but it is an arduous process. Despite the challenges, his five years with NTC have convinced Lohr that it is the only way to do effective development work. “Development is empowerment and it’s starting from a bottom-up approach. And it takes a lot of time. It’s not just dropping off a bunch of books and saying you developed a community or a culture or people. It needs to come from within a community… over a long period of time.” But this kind of work can present a challenge when it comes to reporting results to donors, “Building relationships goes so far – getting people involved, connecting people, [but] it’s also hard to quantify that or write about it.”

To address this challenge, NTC has recently put together its first “product,” an initiative called “The Village Reading Corner” that connects third grade classrooms in the US and Tanzania through the mutual reading of a Tanzanian children’s book. NTC developed a curriculum for the teachers where the students exchange worksheets with their favorite illustrations and draw pictures about their lives. At the end, everyone gets to keep a copy of the book – the Tanzanians in Swahili and Americans in English. Grassroots community development doesn’t easily lend itself to branding, which can be frustrating and Lohr says it feels good to package something for NTC. “I involve a lot of high school students in this, and when people try to explain what NTC is, they can’t do it. And I’m like, well, that’s not good! No company can do well if people can’t explain it.” It was from this frustration that Project Repat was born, as well.

Tomorrow read about Project Repat and how the shirts make it happen!