 "Photo: Photo Courtesy of HALO Project")
When N.C. Central University special education graduate student Sajdah Abdul-Wakil first travelled to Africa in 2005 with her mother, Aisha Abdul-Ali, a director with the Durham chapter of Sister Cities International, she had no idea that she would be finding her mission in life.
While in Arusha, a sister city with Durham, she met with Benjamin William Mkapa, president of the United Republic of Tanzania, and First Lady Anna Mkapa.
She questioned the First Lady about the country's needs and the first lady said that school children lacked meals during the school day.
Since that trip Abdul-Wakil has been obsessed with finding a way to assist the children she first met in Arusha, Tanzania.
"Knowing that providing a meal throughout the day could sustain an education for somebody seemed like a very possible solution," said Abdul-Wakil.
During the 15-hour flight returning to Durham she went to work developing The HALO Project (Helping Another Loved One), a non-profit that works under the umbrella of Sister Cities International.
And in 2008 Abdul-Wakil's HALO Project partnered with Stop Hunger Now to send over 17 tons of packaged food to Arusha – enough to provide 280,000 meals to school children.
The packaged meals included dehydrated rice mixtures with soy and meat flavor assembled by Duke and NCCU university students and the Durham community.
"Several organizations came together to put Central and Duke's students together to bring some kind of peace. It definitely was a labor of love," she said.
Once the food was assembled Durham Mayor Bill Bell joined Abdul-Wakil and representatives of the Durham chapter of Sister Cities to distribute the food to the secondary schools in Arusha.
"The more food we passed out the more real the mission became to me," said Abdul-Wakil.
"I began to see the faces of the children changed when they reached out to hold bags."
By winter early spring 2009, over 19,000 school children in Arusha had received packaged meals for at least three months, but some as long as six months.
"You knew change was going to come but you didn't know it was going to be that big," said Abdul-Wakil.
According to Abdul-Wakil one student in Arusha called the food "Obama Rice," saying that "it came from America to give us hope and belief that we could make it through whatever we worked hard for."
After food distribution there was an 85 percent increase in enrollment and a 15 percent decrease in truancy. The focus and retention of students improved according to headmasters and teachers.
HALO's next project was work with NCCU's education department on The Cultural Responsive Teaching Grant, a grant that paid travel and living expenses for five weeks for three NCCU graduate students, including Abdul-Wakil, to teach in Arusha.
Abdul-Wakil said she presented the idea to the director of grant, education professor Ellen Bacon.
"Making a decision about helping the students travel to Tanzania was not a tough decision other than insuring that they had the usual supports in place for any international travel," said Bacon.
Bacon said the Abdul-Wakil's knowledge and experience of Arusha were valuable to the students who made the trip to Arusha.
"Success truly came to Arusha during that time and I'm blessed to be part of anything that has to do with improving any child's future," said Abdul-Wakil.
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