community profile
Vingunguti is an administrative ward in the Ilala district of the Dar es Salaam Region of Tanzania. The ward lies south west of the Dar es Salaam central business district. According to the 2012 census, the ward has a total population of 106,946. Primary schools were not established until the 1980's, with a secondary school esetablished in 2010. The CARE for AIDS center is Vingunguti launched in March of 2017 and was the first center in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
center staff
Medical Counselor, Esther Gerald Kennedy
Esther grew up in Sumbawanga, Tanzania, with seven siblings. In 2015 she began serving with CFA driven by a desire to help people in need. She loves hosting seminars and ensuring her clients are in good health. Her goal is to make each client better than when they first came to the center.
Spiritual Counselor, Stanley Peter Erasto
Stan joined CFA in 2017. For years he has studied and planned to help people who are facing problems such as HIV and AIDS. His favorite part of the job is to release life again for a client who was going to die. He strives to change the life of each client, ensuring that they believe in a new life, new idea of life, and fear the treat of AIDS.
center history
Year graduates Faith-Decisions Orphans prevented
2017 70 2 180
2018 70 10 152
2019 70 7 151
2020* N/A N/A N/A
2021 79 6 196
*The cohort in the 2019-2020 class was impacted by delays in the CARE for AIDS program caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and health precautions. To learn more about how we responded to the pandemic, visit this page.
Graduate profiles
Coletta Inselmo, 2020 Client
Coletta is the eldest of the four siblings, she has three sisters and before testing positive for HIV, she lived happily with her family. After she disclosed her positive HIV status to her family, though, her sisters abandoned her. To add to her grief, Coletta found that her sisters had also spread the rumor of her status throughout the community. She was stigmatized by everyone and felt completely alone. Coletta started losing weight rapidly, her mental and physical health deteriorated, and within a very short time she was bedridden.
In 2019 she heard about the CARE for AIDS program. She joined the 2019 cohort and was amazed to find that she was not the only person living with HIV in her community. She loved group therapy and connected well with the other clients. After working through her anger in group therapy and one on one counseling sessions, she decided to reach out to her sisters to seek reconciliation. They are working on mending their relationship, and Coletta is very full of hope for the future.
“Mama Tony”, 2018 Graduate
Mama Tony’s husband and family disowned her after finding out about her HIV status. Tragically, she had nowhere to turn and was forced to live on the streets for a number of months. During this hardship, she was recruited into the CARE for AIDS program. She dove into the content and committed to learning everything she could. She mastered a number of skills she learned in the economic empowerment seminars and was quickly able to open her own business. Over time, she was able to save up enough money to purchase her own plot of land. She now works as a trainer at the CARE for AIDS center in Vingunguti- she trains new classes of clients on a variety of skills, and she is affectionately known to clients as “Mama”.