Help defend and protect LGBTQ+ rights in Tanzania

Dear Supporters and Friends of LGBT Voice,

As the year draws to an end we are thrilled by the widespread support we received throughout the year, I would like to sincerely thank you for your support to LGBT Voice Tanzania; our organization has counted on your generosity to support our work toward LGBT rights for in 2016. We are extremely grateful for your support of our programs, and we hope that you will continue to show your compassion for LGBT people in Tanzania it is a sobering fact that Tanzania’s LGBT rights are violated every single day

 Our single-minded efforts over the last 3 years have been to restore to Tanzania’s LGBT their rights. This year especially, our focus has been on underlining and putting into action long-term goals that focus on LGBT rights while also ensuring sustainability of our efforts. And we’ve also attempted to figure out the impact of goal setting and of the progress we’ve made.

Much work has been done, but in the current Tanzanian context, where LGBT rights are not recognized and violations are significant, it is clear that our actions need to be more focused and must bring about lasting change for LGBT individuals.

As an organization that spearheads the movement for LGBT rights, we realize the need to be more strategic in our choice of issues, approaches and utilization of resources to maximize our impact on LGBT. Accordingly this year, our focus has been to move to the next stage of making an actionable difference to the LGBT Community.  So that we can well and truly transform lives positively and mold the future of the LGBT Community across Tanzania.

With the LGBT as the nucleus of our work, our most critical goal is to ensure that our work penetrates deeper to address the grassroots and critical issues affecting the LGBT Community, and respond with approaches that work in the respective geographical areas while being prepared for any emergencies

Some few achievements in 2016

This year both the organization and the LGBT community in Tanzania faced challenges threatened the existence of LGBT people and associations but regardless of the environment in the country we managed to:

• Reach and impact a number of LGBT individuals whose rights are were violated
• Leverage our current strengths of extensive experience at the grassroots and advocacy level
• Were to address the most critical issues affecting LGBT individuals – particularly those of physical danger and other acute life-threatening issues
• Developed a data collection tool that will be used to collect data at household level, interviews, community profiles and observation
• For the first time we managed to prepare a litigation against the government and now our lawyer is in the final stages of filling the case in high court
• Opened a new office in Kagera Region

Future Plans and need for funding

Our plan for the year 2017 is to continue creating awareness about the negative implications of Homophobia and especially state sponsored and build a strong movement for equality in Tanzania.

Needs:

• Hire 3 qualified and competent staff, (Programs officer, accounting officer and capacity building officer)
• Open office in two more regions (Arusha and Dodoma)
• Purchase 2 desk top computers for the head office

Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope we can continue to make a difference together.