The concept of TVE started with my experience as a short-term volunteer Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was March of 2006 and I had been climbing the proverbial corporate ladder in California for some 20 years. Though it was a rewarding experience in many ways, I felt ready for a change. A golden opportunity fell into my lap when the company I was working for restructured. Taking a voluntary severance, I decided to take a volunteer assignment as a chemistry and physics teacher at a secondary school on the outskirts of Dar.

It was relatively easy to choose Tanzania because there was plenty of opportunity to contribute, it was politically stable and it had vast natural beauty. I really didn't know what to expect in during my 10 week assignment. But I felt a certain excitement because it was so foreign, and then again, I wondered about what I could actually accomplish in such a short time.

When I headed back to California in late-May, HIV/AIDS in Tanzania was still running rampant, millions of children were still living in poverty and corruption still siphoned off most of the foreign aid coming into the country. So much was still the same for people on the ground in Dar, but I had to admit that they had changed me. After a lifetime of spending vacations and leisure time in luxury resorts and with abundant liberty, I had finally seen for myself what I only caught a glimpse of on CCN, BBC and a handful of documentaries. I had read about it, but now I had seen it for myself, and that experience is near impossible to put into words. Most simply put; it’s the difference between knowing something and really “getting” it.

Before coming to Tanzania I felt overwhelmed by the issues the country was facing. Coming out of Tanzania my experiences had taken me far away from this bigger picture, and instead brought me right onto the impact one volunteer can make to one local child... or a handful of children. So, it was always really about the friendships made with locals and volunteers alike. It was the feeling of holding a little 5 year old girl, who had the biggest smile on her face because I and other volunteers decided to show up. It was talking with the secondary school teens after school about their thoughts on religion, AIDS, and foreigners…. and seeing their amazement in class when explaining the physics behind airplane taking-off. And ultimately it was really “getting” that the people of Tanzania are just as happy as folks back at home in California, if not more so. I believed upon leaving that the peoples of Tanzania didn’t need to be saved. They did, however, seek more opportunity for themselves and their families, for their tribes and communities. That was my amazing Tanzania volunteer experience.

Shortly after returning to California, I found myself thinking more and more about the role of short-term international volunteers in aiding the communities in Tanzania. I kept coming back to the inconsistency between the amount of money and people available in the 1st world, and apparent lack of effective bridges into these 3rd world communities. Overall, the system of effective distribution of resources seemed crippled by insufficient integrity and goodwill. But the groundswell of support from the short-term international volunteers was incredible. From my few months in Tanzania I saw that the spirit of goodwill was universally embodied in the volunteers, and that their ability to collectively generate funding and create opportunities for locals peoples and communities was vast. What was sorely needed was a stable bridge between the two. A bridge that understood and cared about the needs of each. This was the birth of Tanzania Volunteer Experience (TVE).

So TVE is simply a bridge between those who are willing to give of themselves personally and those who would use those gifts responsibly to develop new opportunities for themselves. TVE provides just enough structure to allow for an interaction that naturally results in a meaningful and productive experience for all.

My colleagues and I invite you to learn more about us, and if you have the liberty, let us be your bridge to lending a hand in Tanzania. We believe the difference does start with you here.

Best wishes,

Michael Revius
Founder of TVE