Second year Geography and Internation Development students link up with safe house in Tanzania

There are some topics in the geographies of development field that are never easy to deal with and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of these. Instead of delivering a fairly standard lecture on the subject, I decided to involve a charity and a field practitioner in helping me introduce students to the subject at last Thursday’s session.

We began by Skyping Janet Chapman at the London office of the charity Tanzania Development Trust (TDT). Janet is a Trustee and Campaigns Manager of the charity that began its work in 1975. TDT have helped develop the FGM Safe House at Mugumu in north-western Tanzania amongst a range of other projects.

With the help of a set of PowerPoint slides, Janet explained that one of the many challenges facing young girls who wish to avoid FGM is finding their way to a safe house. There are no maps in this part of Tanzania and Janet has made use of online technology and Crowd2Map software to provide accurate maps. The students had the opportunity to join the thousands of volunteers already mapping this region. It soon became a competition to see who could map the most houses.

Fighting FGM at Mugumu, Tanzania. Rhobi talks to villagers at a Roadshow

The highlight of the session was talking to Rhobi Samwelly, TDTs representative in Mara, Tanzania. We used Skype again and had a three-way conversation with her and Janet with students able to ask questions about the safe house she runs and FGM.

It was a fantastic session and I am grateful to both Janet and Rhobi for giving up their time to help us understand a little more about FGM. I am also grateful to the IT support staff who helped me with the technology which worked perfectly.

Kevin Cook, Module Tutor

Geography students learn about the challenging issues surrounding Female Genital Mutilation

Dr Kevin Cook reports on a recent class about the challenging issues surrounding Female Genital Mutilation...

As I move towards the end of my second year module on Geography and Development, I have the opportunity to deal with some of the more challenging issues that face the world. I wanted to try to cover the complex issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) but was keenly aware of my limited understanding of the issues involved and wanted to provide a view from the Global South delivered by ‘practitioners’ working in the field.

I had heard about the excellent work of the UK charity Tanzania Development Trust (TDS) and knew that they worked with communities on FGM. I contacted them and Janet Chapman, Campaigns Manager and Project Officer, kindly offered to set up a Skype session with my students. We linked up with Egle Marija Ramanauskaite in London and Rhobi Samwelli, the TDS representative in the Mara Region in Tanzania.

Tanzania Development Trust logo

The twin highlights of the session were being able to talk directly, via Skype, with Rhobi Samwelli. Rhobi manages a safe house at Mugumu in Mara region for young women who wish to escape the horrors of FGM. The UK students were able to ask Rhobi detailed questions on FGM; questions that I would have been unable to answer.

The second highlight of the session was being able to take part in the online mapping project that Janet is looking after. One of the many problems facing young girls who wish to avoid being cut, is to find their way to the TDS funded safe house at Mugumu. There are no maps to guide them and Janet is using the mapping software package, Openstreetmap, accessible online and on phones.


Students were allocated a small un-mapped square and it soon became a competition to see who could identify the most buildings, roads and paths from the satellite images and transfer them to the base map. Their efforts will be confirmed on the ground later.

Over 900 online volunteers and 199 local mappers are now involved in the project – make that 925 with the University of Northampton students added. They have mapped an area of 14,248 square kilometres and added 5 towns and 169 villages and hamlets, 42,128 km of roads and tracks and 700,000 buildings. Countrywide the project has added 12,294 schools and 162 clinics.

Having better maps helped prevent 2257 girls from being cut in the 2016-17 season. However change is a slow process. 1076 girls were still cut, down from 3700 the previous year and 4 girls died, down from 12 last year.

Many thanks to everyone who made this session possible and especially to Janet, Egle, Rhobi and the GEO2006 students.

Anyone wanting to get involved in this work should contact Janet at j.chapman@tanzdevtrust.org