Leighton Park School has joined Standing Voice in the fight against social exclusion of people with albinism in Tanzania. Together we are raising vital funds to increase the impact of Standing Voice's Education Fund to ensure young people with albinism are empowered through education to be the makers of their own future.

People with albinism face many challenges at all levels of national education system. This includes ostracism, lack of respect for their requirements in the classroom and disbelief in their ability as students. The economic restraint experienced by many families leads to restricted access to education. This has resulted in illiteracy and a low level of employment amongst people with albinism. To put this in numbers: Merely 10% of children with albinism in Tanzania are enrolled in secondary school, compared to the national average of 65%.

Education is often regarded as a privilege in Tanzania as it is not provided freely, but we firmly believe it is indeed crucial right and catalyst for social change. That is why we are assisting Standing Voice to support vulnerable children with albinism in their academic aspirations. The Education Fund meets the costs of school fees as well as academic materials both of which are beyond the means of most. In addition Standing Voice provides regular pastoral support and careers advice to all beneficiaries to ensure they are supported to fulfil their potential and realise their ambitions. Finishing school and having the chance to attend university makes young adults with albinism into highly employable role models and advocates for a diversity embracing community and a more understanding and inclusive society.

Currently Standing Voice Education Fund sponsors the schooling of 24 children with albinism from 11 years old up to university level. This is currently a drop in the ocean with the current numbers of young people with albinism in Tanzania estimated to be 5,500. We need your help to fundamentally change the lives of these young people forever and kindly ask for your support. Please donate today.

About Standing Voice

Standing Voice promotes social inclusion and works to stop human rights violations against marginalised groups. We exist to give the disempowered vital tools and platforms to speak back to their society and reassert their presence and equality.

We strive to nurture people’s understanding of others so that in the future these marginalised groups will be embraced by society. And in the meantime, we provide the essential basic needs they have been unrightfully denied. 

We currently promote the social inclusion of those living with albinism in Tanzania. The stigma that surrounds them has been ingrained within society for many generations and throughout their lives they battle with prejudice, social exclusion and isolation. Seen as a curse from God, they are believed to bring bad luck to the households they are born in to. Many are killed at birth or rejected by their families. Judged by their skin colour alone they are continually dehumanised and ostracised within their communities.

This stigmatisation has reached an unimaginable new level with nearly 100 people living with albinism brutally murdered in Tanzania since 2006. Many others have been left mutilated. This practice has been fuelled by witchcraft. Witchdoctors say that magic charms are more powerful if they contain body parts from people with albinism, which has led to a lucrative criminal trade in these body parts.

You can hear many of our beneficiaries tell their story in this short video:

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