A Message from Our Founder, Wendy Black-Nasta (Mama Wendy)

February, 2025

I just returned from six-weeks in Tanzania, where I spent time with all of our Children of Peace and close family friends. We celebrated the college graduations of both Witness and Jackie. Witness is now the second accountant in our family, and Jackie is our first  community developer. That party was followed by my birthday celebration, when our children came from all over Tanzania to celebrate with me. My birthday was capped off with a party celebrating both Neema and Big Dorcas graduating high school and starting college. As always, we are blessed to have so many happy events to celebrate together.  As many of you know, and helped make happen, we were able to purchase a beautiful 2+ acre farm in 2024 and will now begin fundraising to build our permanent PEACE HOUSE for our kids. The farm has been purchased, our beautiful stone security wall has been completed, and we are currently designing our metal security gates for both the main entrance as well as the side entrance. They are being made for us by local welders near our village. All of the people building with us are local to the area and stones are mined and cut close to our land.  Our goal has always been to add to the economy whenever we have built anything in Tanzania the past 18 years.

Much of our 2025 fundraising efforts will be focusing on the construction of our forever home for our family. Bahati and I designed our dream for the PEACE VILLAGE, which, once priced out with the contractors and architects, came to a screeching halt. It’s a beautiful design that would come in way, way over budget. Therefore, we’ve been tweaking the design(s) and will instead be constructing a 5 bedroom home that will have an open floor plan for the first floor living/dining room, kitchen and two wash rooms. We are still firming up the plans for construction and will know exactly what we’ll be building once the final prices come in. Like I told our kids, they can continue to add onto the main house as they establish themselves with jobs, or even construct their own homes on our land in the future. Our Peace Land is very large and can accommodate our huge gardens, chickens, livestock and anything else we are  hoping to build in the future. For now, we will just focus on creating the permanent home for our family so that everyone has a home base to return to, no matter where they end up attending college and getting jobs in the future.

The land is gorgeous, with a clear view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. There is a small river next to the land, making water accessible for our gardens. We also have mature mango trees, as well as banana trees. We plan on growing large organic gardens of watermelon, pineapple, herbs and vegetables, and will also plant additional trees that can provide food. Having been an organic maize farm for many years, the soil is dark brown, and beautiful. We plan on creating as small of a carbon footprint as possible. We were able to bring both water and electricity onto our land and are also using solar lights. We will try to incorporate solar energy as much as possible as we move forward.

In addition to our ongoing, constant work in Tanzania, we are also focusing on our NATIVE EYES 2025 Travel Team. We will be returning to the Todd County Elementary School in April and May with this years travel team. Our goal this spring is to take care of all the children in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. Like last year, the students will be coming to us from TCES, as well as from neighboring communities. We are blessed to have the ongoing support of Changing Life Through Lenses, The Essilor Foundation, and Padre Pio Foundation of America. All three organizations have been supporting each of our free NATIVE EYES Clinics since 2018 and are the reason we can provide care to so many people in need. As of last years clinic, AFWP has taken care of 8,416 patients in Connecticut, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Kibosho-Umbwe, Tanzania. We are grateful to our doctors, opticians, film and sound crews and volunteers for their incredible generosity—continuing to travel with us, literally around the world, to help provide care to those who need us most. Not only is our team made up of amazing professionals that are totally heart driven, but no-one on our team gets paid. This is an entirely volunteer group of peace-keeping professionals who share their skills to help others improve their lives.

In addition, 2025 is the year we will be transitioning our very successful community based “Interfaith Dialogues” to our AFWP “Intercultural Dialogues.” We will be partnering with many other peace and art-based organizations in Connecticut to continue to create a safe space to address the issues facing us here in America, as well as events and issues specific to our own state of Connecticut. We have proven over and over again that through the arts, and open communication, peace and love are absolutely possible. Our light has to continue to shine the brightest in the darkest corners so that everyone has a safe and healthy home, regardless of our race, religion, political affiliation, gender or social status. Through the arts and creativity, love is born. And with love, everything is possible!

Thank you to everyone who has loved us and held our dreams in your hearts so that we may continue to sustain our original mission of helping to change the world through the arts. With your love and support all of our dreams are possible.

Blessings for a wonderful and loving 2025,

Wendy