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The ultimate purpose of our lives is to be happy, but we often look for happiness in the wrong places. Scientific research has proved many times that the joy of getting is short-lived. Our lives are richer when we share, and that great inner joy comes from helping others to better their lives. Money actually can buy happiness too, if spent the right way. If you want to be happy, research suggests you spend it on someone else. If you want to sustain happiness over time, you also need to take a break from what you’re currently consuming and experience something new.
We want to increase happiness and well-being of every person who are either traveling or providing these amazing experiences with us. Our mission is to help indigenous peoples, like the Maasai and Hadzabe, to maintain their traditional livelihood and to give travelers a chance to give back to their hosts directly.
Tanzania is the fourth most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa. More than one-fourth of Tanzania’s 53 million inhabitants live below the poverty line, and almost 10 percent live in extreme poverty. Visit Natives works with the indigenous peoples only. According to the United Nations, indigenous peoples suffer from poorer health, and they are more likely to experience disability and reduced quality of life and ultimately die younger than their non-indigenous counterparts. They also suffer from malnutrition because of environmental degradation and contamination of the ecosystems in which indigenous communities have traditionally lived, loss of land and, and decline inaccessibility of traditional food sources.
The Tanzanian government runs four health insurance schemes alongside multiple private options, but the vast majority of the population remains uninsured, leading to significant inequities in access to care. This can be a vehicle for improving equity, health outcomes, and financial well-being as it provides the essential medical care treatment, for example, of malaria, tuberculosis, brucellosis, typhoid and other tropical diseases that are very common in Tanzania. Not to forget basic vaccination that many Maasai children lack because they don't go to hospital.
Giving to others simply gives us pleasure. We make a difference with every time when a traveler books an expedition with us. We buy health insurance for every Maasai woman and her kids in every Maasai boma that we visit and stay with our travelers. In this way, travelers will also see what they contribute because every trip and traveler matters. For example, this month we bought a travel insurance for a 2 years old child's grandmother, because child's mother died in labour. We took the child to hospital as she had a very bad ear infection. Besides getting a treatment for the infection, the child got all the vaccinations taht she was lacking compleatly. We couldn't have left happier and so was Maasai grandmother happy too. From now on, she can seek treatment for her children free for one year until we renew the health insurance.
Besides providing healthcare services for our hosts and communities we work with, sanitation is crucial thing for well-being that, in addition to buying health insurances, Visit Natives builds a toilet to every Maasai boma that we stay and visit. Each traveler contributes to our mission to do good, and everyone will concretely see how their money makes a direct impact to improve the health and sanitation of their extended host family. We think it is crucial that travelers see and can be involved in our projects personally with no additional incentives. We don't only create once-in-a-lifetime memories, and we change lives. Join us on our next expedition and let's make the world better and us happier!
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