Miles for Smiles

Project No: E17

Project Managers:
Mario and Sandra Bellaviti

Contact Info:
miles_for_smiles@yahoo.com

Donate To This Project Back to Tanzania

Factoid: Arusha was dubbed as "the Geneva of Africa" by Bill Clinton during a Presidential visit. --Though poverty still exists side-by-side those living a more prosperous lifestyle.

Arusha is the symbolic capital of the Eastern Africa Coalition. It is also where the UN Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide is based, plus home to many diplomats and UN workers.

Additionally, Arusha is the base for many safari tours traveling to renowned national parks like Serengeti and Kilimanjaro.

Miles for Smiles

300

Project Managers: Mario and Sandra Bellaviti

Miles for Smiles (MFS) originated in Italy, with the Bellavitis working to bring assistance and relief in what was formerly Yugoslavia. In 1999, project managers Mario and Sandra Bellaviti relocated to Arusha, Tanzania, where they have dedicated their time and resources to providing various humanitarian as well as educational services and programs.

Initial projects included running the “Silver Mountain Learning Center”—an international early learning school—for over five years. Teacher training seminars were conducted regularly for elementary school teachers from cities and villages across the country. Other programs included support for a leper colony, assistance for a shelter for homeless teenagers, and translation of educational materials into Swahili.

In 2005 MFS focused its efforts on establishing the “Urafiki” or “Friendship” Center—a centrally-located facility providing basic food supplies, educational programs, vocational skills training and a warm and supportive environment for orphans and destitute families in the surrounding community.

MFS’s current activities are centered on the following key programs:

  • The Urafiki Center with development programs for children and youth
  • Humanitarian assistance for the elderly and impoverished rural communities
  • Parenting workshops and Christian orientation studies

 

Real Life Story — Stella's Six-Year Transformation— While at our center, Stella was always quiet and withdrawn … Read full story

Arusha, Tanzania





Restoring Hope to a Downtrodden Community

In mid-2005, with the help of a dedicated MFS teacher, Miles for Smiles was introduced to the dire plight of many poor families living in outlying slum areas. Garbage and open sewage lined the dirt roads. Raggedy-looking children peered out from mud shacks while women cooked their meager meals on open fires nearby.

Urafiki Center: Physical Care

The Urafiki Center supplies basic food and household packages for destitute families, elderly shut-ins and orphaned youth. Staples include beans, rice, oil, corn flour, sugar, tea, salt, matches, soap and kerosene for lamps. Some families also receive milk and eggs.

Urafiki Center: Educational Development

For children anywhere in the world, having access to education is vital to their mental, social and cultural development. But in the impoverished slums of rural Tanzania, it is also an invaluable part of the solution to breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and helping to move the community forward. 

Urafiki Center: Vocational Skills Training

Miles for Smiles offers after-school vocational skills training for teenagers at the Urafiki Center. Locally-hired instructors provide hands on training throughout the week. Through nurturing creativity and equipping them with employable skills, students will have a better chance of finding decent jobs when they finish school, and thus be a positive influence in their community. The skills they learn will also help them to better help care for their families.

Urafiki Center: Emotional and Spiritual Nurturing

Children at the Urafiki Center were born into harsh conditions in the slums, many of them left orphaned at an early age and having to cope with varying degrees of physical deprivation, loss, abandonment and other emotional trauma.

Humanitarian Relief for the Poor and Drought-Stricken

Miles for Smiles facilitates humanitarian relief efforts in the surrounding impoverished communities and remote tribal regions.

Parenting Workshops

It’s often been said that it takes a village to raise a child, and Miles for Smiles seeks to strengthen that support base through monthly parenting workshops held at the Urafiki Center grounds. Parents, grandmothers and other caregivers attend. The discussions reinforce the caregiver’s responsibilities in relation to the child’s physical and emotional needs. Basic disease-prevention, health and hygiene topics are also addressed.

Archive: Basketball Court for Street Kids

In addition to running the international early learning school five days a week, Miles for Smiles would make regular visits to a center for street children ages 9 through 13, working with the center's personnel to motivate the children to want to stay there. Facing an almost certain future of roaming the streets, begging, being exploited for sex or falling prey to drug dealers, these children will learn life-saving information and skills that will help them become self-supportive assets to society.

Photo Archives

Photos from our early beginnings.