Maanda Ngoitiko

Profile

I am Maanda Ngoitiko, and I was born in Soitsambu, a small remote village in Ngorongoro in Northern Tanzania. Raised in a closely-knit extended Maasai family, I was one of those troublesome kids, and this is the particular reason I got sent to and stayed in school. 

When I’m not working, I am quite occupied tending to my really big family of so many children (6 of my own), our livestock, and as of recently, my vegetable garden. 

I am an outgoing person, and every now and then, I make time to link up and touch base with my close friends, usually over a mug of milk tea or Nyama Choma (roasted beef/goat/mutton, a local delicacy and a personal favorite).

After completing my primary school education, I successfully refused a second attempt at a forced arranged marriage.

The late Hon. Lazaro Parkipuny, then a member of the Parliament of Ngorongoro, and with the help of my cousin brother, Parkipuny arranged for my escape in the middle of the night, took care of me and sent me off for further studies. 

Parkipuny was very hard-working, knowledgeable, and so passionate in his advocacy for pastoralists. He believed in me, and after I earned an advanced diploma in developmental studies in Dublin, I came back to work with him at KIPOC, an NGO he started to help the pastoralists protect their Indigenous land and improve their economic status. 

Working with him, I learned so much and it was while at KIPOC that I saw the need for and gained practical skills to start a women-centered organization.

In 1997, I was one of 10 Maasai women who founded Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC).

In PWC’s early days,  my fellow founders and I walked for miles and miles, reaching out to women in different villages across the Ngorongoro district with early sensitization meetings about the idea of PWC — women’s rights and girls’ education. We faced some difficulties, with men feeling like we were trying to make their daughters and wives defiant and with the majority of the women being reluctant to go up against community expectations. 

Slowly we won them over and built momentum and now we have 10,000+ members. We are devoted to work with and for pastoralist women and girls in northern Tanzania to ensure their rights and voices are respected, they are economically empowered, and they have access to quality social services.

Now, I am PWC’s executive director.

In this capacity, I work with my team, the majority of whom are women, to plan and design various contextualized community-led projects, oversee their implementation through active involvement in field work, paying regular supervision visits as well as going through field reports. 

For example, through our Women Solidarity Bomas program, women get to collectively own and manage a livestock business the profits of which help in restocking for the poorest boma members (among the Maasai, livestock are of high socioeconomic value.). Through this work, women are able to provide for their families while also transforming the community’s biased perceptions on women’s decision-making abilities.

Every day I wake up grateful, knowing that I have the ability and I am well positioned to actually make meaningful changes in so many girls’ and women’s lives.

Having experienced life both as a young vulnerable Maasai girl and as an educated, empowered and liberal Maasai woman, I know that anyone would, by far, choose the latter. 

Through PWC, my team and I are helping young girls realize their potential and endless possibilities in life through access to quality education and we are equipping women to realize, advocate for and exercise their rights through continued learning, economic empowerment to enhance financial independence and access to and utilization of social services as well as building on their leadership skills and encouraging them to take up male-deemed influential roles in their families and communities.

From my experience, empowered women empower their families.

Through one of our economic empowerment programs, we equip women with basic entrepreneurial skills then facilitate them to explore and venture into small businesses. With this newly found source of steady income, the women help with unmet needs of their families including daily supplies, better living conditions, children’s education, and even family investments. This in the long-run contributes to more economically stable, healthier and happier families and communities.

When we started PWC, we struggled with getting parents to send their daughters to school. We had to use the police to break up so many arranged early marriages, rescuing the girls and giving them a safe home and an opportunity to proceed with school. 

With time however, people realized the importance of girls’ education, and we are now seeing men sell their cattle and properties to finance their daughters’ education as well as receiving overwhelming numbers of scholarships requests from girls and their parents. 

We also have worked with women representatives and community champions to establish two CBOs and many women rights and leadership forums — all are informal platforms that have gained  considerable respect in their communities for the wonderful work they have been doing for women in their localities. They have been the first line of response  for women who face gender-based violence as well as our key focus points when mobilizing women-led advocacy, especially on land rights issues.

And for this reason, I have to keep pushing for more.

The Maasai girls and women (many of whom have become my friends) who call and come to our offices with so many pleas for help, be it education scholarships, help fleeing from early and forced marriages to continue with school, reports of gender-based violence, or just a vote of thanks for those whose lives we have touched in anyway keep me motivated, even on days when I am extremely tired.