PLAISTOW — When Lauren Treitman first visited Tanzania in 2005, she knew it’d hold a special place in her heart for a lifetime.
Magical, she said when asked to describe the country.
“I feel more at home there than I do here,” she said. “The people are so much more welcoming and warm. The landscape is beautiful. But really it’s the people that are so special.”
On her first birthday, Treitman was living in Kenya with her parents. As a teen, she completed her freshman year of schooling in Tanzania. In 2023, while volunteering for Kenya Connect, a University of New Hampshire-based nonprofit, she went back to Africa and after her volunteer work completed, she hopped on a bus, crossed the border into Tanzania and spent a week safariing and traveling.
“That’s when the idea for the foundation was born,” Treitman said. “I had a conversation with the guide and asked if there was anything in Tanzania like what I was doing in Kenya and he said not really.”
The following year, taking what she’d learned from her volunteering with Kenya Connect and her knowledge of Tanzania, she launched the Hisani Foundation, a recognized charity in New Hampshire and a nonprofit in Tanzania, with a mission to empower impoverished girls, women and children.
When the foundation first started in 2024, two projects were at the forefront of Treitman’s mission: Project Safe House and Project WASH, both of which are ongoing.
An undisclosed, secured location in Tazania is a safe house for Maasai girls who have survived emotional, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their families and communities.
The girls can live there up to the age of 18 and receive resources like therapy, social work and job rehabilitation. Right now, there are around 25 girls staying there.
“The Maasai tribe is the biggest tribe in Tanzania and Kenya,” Treitman said. “The girls, they’re subject to a lot of what we would consider pretty barbaric. The women are still exposed to female genital mutilation, child brides are married off at 6 and 7 years old, they’re sexually assaulted and raped often. They also do a lot of facial burning which is very painful.”
On the ground is Tanzania, Hassan Aufi, a social worker, works with the tribe to remove girls from dangerous conditions, rehabilitate them and establish them in Arusha, the country’s unofficial capital city.
Additionally, Project WASH aims to bring reusable sanitary pads to school-aged girls in the city. Right now, more than 50% of sub-Saharan African girls are forced to drop out of school because they can’t manage menstruation.
“They don’t have the proper materials so they’re using things like leaves and rags and sponges and whatever they can find to keep hygienic but they end up leaking through and dirtying their clothes,” Treitman said. “They end up missing five to seven days of school a month and then they fall so far behind that they’re forced to drop out.”
Though proper sanitary supplies are available for purchase in the city, they’re considered a luxury and incredibly expensive, Treitman said. With the average worker earning no more than $1.50 a day, women and girls can’t afford the supplies.
The hope, she said, is Project WASH’s donated supplies will help keep school-aged girls in the classroom.
More recently, the foundation started funding malaria prevention and treatment in the absence of USAID funding, a government-assisted program focused on global health, development and humanitarian aid in other countries.
After funds were cut in January, 83% of funded projects were terminated by March and the government building was closed in July.
“Right now, we don’t have nonprofit status (in the state) just because with the (Trump) administration, they were looking to shut down nonprofits that were helping people but interpreting them as terrorist organizations,” Treitman said.
“Tanzania is a Muslim majority country.”
Because the foundation is ineligible to receive federal funding as a charity, Treitman relies on private donations and monies earned from local craft fairs where she sells native East African jewelry imported from Tanzania and surrounding countries.
As the foundation looks to expand and include additional programming, Treitman said, she and her partner will head to Tanzania in November to distribute supplies to the community.
In lieu of monetary donations, those looking to help can purchase items on Treitman’s Amazon wish list, tinyurl.com/ms9d4dxx, which includes sanitation products, mosquito repellant products, toothbrushes and more.
The products will be shipped directly to her home and packed into suitcases ahead of her Nov. 2 trip.
“They always say, once you go to Africa, it never really leaves you,” Treitman said. “And I’m always trying to find ways to get back there.”