WE EMPOWER PEOPLE TO DESIGN AND MAKE THEIR OWN
​TECHNOLOGIES TO SOLVE COMMUNITY CHALLENGES.

We are a social innocation center.
​We host workshops, we teach and we support innovators.

​Creative Capacity Building Workshops

We teach the design cycle of build-test-iterate, and participants learn through seeing examples of appropriate technologies, completing design challenges, and building one of our technologies with hand tools.

Jamii Tech Workshops

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The Jamii Technology Program (JTP) is an eight - week design program that connects international teams to do context driven design with and for members of the Arusha community. Teams consist of a Tanzanian community partner, Tanzanian youth, and international design or engineering students. Each team collaborates to design and make a solution to a problem identified by the community partner. Teams are supported by Twende staff and other mentors. The program seeks to develop the competence and confidence of all involved, specifically, in the design process, creative problem solving, local production, and cross-cultural collaboration

Build it
​Workshops​

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Build it Workshops aim at educating about further development skills.
Build It Workshops focus on teaching specific skills to participants. While all our offerings encourage creativity and problem-solving, these workshops are more specifically themed and result in building something specific. ​

Why we do what we do:

Many of the technologies that make their way to the Tanzania:
  1. are designed and manufactured abroad, leaving Tanzanians unable to repair their devices, especially when materials are not locally available. 
  2. are developed without a rich understanding of local needs and resources, often making them irrelevant or impractical. For example, any technology that requires electricity is useless for the 80+% of Tanzanian villagers who do not have access to or cannot afford electricity.
  3. are too expensive for the average Tanzanian.
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This leads to technologies that do not address the real needs here. 

OUR SOLUTION:

We believe collaborating with students and community members in Tanzania to identify their challenges and design & create their own solutions to their problems will contribute to a world with improved access to technologies that improve people’s lives, a stronger local economy, and a nation of innovators and problem-solvers.

Hence, we teach people how to create technologies that:
  1. address their own needs.
  2. utilize locally available materials, 
  3. are inexpensive and affordable,
  4. are able to be repaired locally.
  5. are designed with (not just for) communities & partners.
And we make some of our own as well.