Founder/Director India Howell

India Howell has lived and worked in Tanzania since 1998. She has devoted her life to children and the poor, acting on her vision to create a home for orphaned children in a remote village in the northern highlands of Tanzania.

India grew up in the north shore of Long Island, New York. She attended Greenvale School in New York; Miss Porter's School in Connecticut; Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland and received her B.A. from University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont. After college she worked at E.W. Howell, Inc. before starting her own construction company. India continued to hone her managerial skills working in publishing and the hotel business in Maine and managing a commercial bakery in Boston. So how did India end up living in a traditional, rural village in Tanzania in the remote Rift Valley?

“If someone had told me, when I moved to Tanzania in 1998, that I would be writing a profile about myself as the Founder of the Tanzanian Children’s Fund I would not have believed them. Honestly, all I did was go to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro! But, I’ve heard it said that our path in life is most often found when we are on the road to some place else. That is certainly true for me. I discovered my path the moment I stepped off the plane in Tanzania. I felt that I had stepped into the place where I belonged; the place that would become my true home forever. So, after climbing Kili, I returned to the States and cancelled my plans to buy a B&B in Vermont and took a job with a safari company in the bush in Tanzania. My job took me to the city of Arusha every week to buy supplies. As the weeks passed, I noticed that there seemed to be an ever-growing number of boys begging and living on the streets. I learned that these kids were mostly orphans who had run away from relatives who did not want them and had abused and neglected them.

I soon learned about organizations who were helping these street kids. These organizations witnessed that after a child has been living on the streets for as little as a month, only the smallest percentage can be brought back into a home life of discipline and rules. I thought to myself, ‘What to do?’ How to work towards a solution to an insurmountable problem?

Well, I was raised by a mother whose motto was: there are “no problems just solutions”. And so after much thought and planning, the Tanzanian Children’s Fund was born in 2003. Our core mission is to identify and rescue these orphaned children who find themselves unwanted and alone in the world – before they run to the streets. In 2003 I was invited by the District Council of Karatu to move to the area and fulfill my dream of providing a home and family to unwanted children.”

India founded the Tanzanian Children¹s Fund in 2003 to aid children in need in Tanzania by opening her own rented home to 17 children. As of June 2009, there are 69 children living with her at the Children¹s Village. Home for India is the Children¹s Village and the children living there are her kids. 

Today India is known throughout northern Tanzania as ‘Mama India’ who has provided a home to orphaned and unwanted children; hope and employment to villagers who have never had a job; and scholarships to worthy students.

India is the first to say that she has not done this work alone. Hardworking and selfless, practical and compassionate, she inspires tremendous loyalty from friends and from those who work for her. India has found her work, her passion, and her home in Tanzania.