“You must teach children how to dream.”
— Olais Meinyali, Program Director for Pamoja Project

Some of you are already familiar with Olais Meinyali, but he may be a new face to others. Pamoja Project's 2024 focus on education required enlisting one of the most effective leaders of programming for children and youth as our Tanzanian Education Program Director.

Olais began working in Tanzanian child welfare in 2008, with training from a German non-profit that was developing programs in our service area. He moved to WAMATA in 2010, where he became the coordinator of the Orphan and Vulnerable Children Department. Watching Olais at work, we soon began to call him "the Pied Piper", since village children would find and follow him wherever he went. Olais made sure the kids in our program received tuition, uniforms and supplies, but also encouragement and supervision through visits to their homes, schools, and an endless stream of text messages. If you visited Olais at home on the weekend you would probably find an extra 8 or 9 village children sharing lunch with his family!

Pamoja Project is thrilled that this vibrant and dedicated leader has agreed to work with us directly as our new Program Director.