Tara Maria Blasco, PhD, received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology (specialty in Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology) at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute in 2006. A graduate of Dr. Ray Castellino's Foundation Training, she has used his method to facilitate adult process workshops in the US and her native country, Spain.  She has worked at Castellino’s clinic, Building and Enhancing Bonding and Attachment (BEBA), since 2001. In addition, Tara is a director of Global Resource Alliance –
www.globalresourcealliance.org – a nonprofit organization that seeks and helps implement solutions to the challenges of poverty and disease in the world’s most impoverished regions.

The interviewer: Arabella received her B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University, completed one-year’s M.A. coursework in clinical psychology, and spent many years in business management.  A Buddhist student and practitioner for thirteen years, Arabella has written a book on Buddhist reform that is in its final editing stages

Arabella: In looking at your website, I was so impressed with the work you are doing as a director of Global Resource Alliance.  How did you begin it; what got you involved and why did you choose Tanzania, specifically?

Tara: My husband, Lyn, was searching the web for volunteer opportunities in his field of accounting and finance.  He sent his personal information to many different non-profits around the world and one, in Tanzania, requested his help.  He visited the organization for several weeks in 2001 and found that their greatest challenge was lack of funding.  So he returned to California and organized GRA – Global Resource Alliance – to raise funds for projects in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania.  I came into the picture one year later when I started to volunteer. 

Arabella: And have you enjoyed Tanzania?

Tara: Yes, we do like it a lot!  It is challenging because it’s a very poor country.  People live on less than a dollar a day, that’s the average income.  So really, they live on the minimum that you can imagine!  So, it is challenging and disease is rampant.  We have to protect ourselves as much as we can and strengthen our immune system before going there.  But, it is a wonderful country.  People are very welcoming and loving and it is amazing the way that they can deal with their circumstances and smile even more than you see people smiling in Western countries. 

Arabella: On your website, you discuss the Kinesi Village Project.  What is it, and why did you choose that particular village?

Tara: Kinesi is a village of about 5,000 inhabitants.  It is in a beautiful geographical setting on the shores of Lake Victoria – across Mara Bay from Musoma, the town where we stay on our visits.  We chose that village because we have very good contacts in local community organizations there that we can trust.  They are working hard to improve the conditions of the villagers and have very good motives.  So, we knew we could rely on them to collaborate on this project.  The demand is so overwhelming in Africa that you just have to start somewhere! 

Arabella: What is the actual project?

Tara: Well, we talk about the nine steps in this Kinesi Village project.  Basically, the fundamental idea is to help people overcome poverty and to live a more abundant life.  In order to do that, there are nine areas that we address:

One is water – providing clean, safe water.  We’re going to drill this October to develop a well for the whole village.  That’s really the main priority for everybody because there are so many water-borne diseases, like typhoid and cholera, that villagers contract regularly from the water of Lake Victoria.  Most of the residents can’t even afford to buy charcoal to boil the water before use.

Second is food – helping them secure food.  We are funding a 12-month organic gardening project now and will be hosting a Permaculture Design course in 2007.  These are for villagers, leaders of NGOs and students from the US, Europe and Australia who would like to get a taste of sustainable development work in an underdeveloped country.

The third is sustainable building.  We have done some research and are now trying to buy a manual block press that produces stabilized earth bricks from dirt, sand and a little cement – and without the need to fire the bricks – relieving their extreme deforestation problem and improving air quality.  We built an experimental house for one of the poorest (and oldest) members of the community using a similar type of brick.

Fourth will be education, for sure.  We are helping to fund the building of the first secondary school built in the village, and will be providing scholarships to families that can’t afford tuition.  Also, we’re supporting the primary school with art projects and organic gardening.  Whatever is necessary to bring more education to the village!

Fifth will be health.  Our approach is to support natural, holistic and alternative medicine.  Malaria is the number one cause of death in Africa, killing one child in Africa every 30 seconds.  To combat this problem, we have started a project that we are very proud of, using a homeopathic neem tincture.  Research that we have done in collaboration with a local MD has found that the preparation can reduce the incidence of malaria by over 50% after 6 months of regular use.

The tincture treatments are combined with the use of long lasting mosquito nets impregnated with strong chemicals that repel the mosquitoes.  Mosquitoes come out mostly in the night, so when children and families sleep with mosquito nets, it really helps a lot to decrease the amount of people that contract the illness.  Villagers pay only about one dollar for the nets and we subsidize the remaining cost, which amounts to about three dollars.

Sixth is alternative energies.  We are trying to introduce a biogas cooking system.  The problem is that there is a lot of open-fire cooking indoors, which is really toxic, and adds to the already serious deforestation problem.  We have researched solar ovens, but villagers prefer the quicker option of cook-stoves fueled by gas generated from animal manure and organic scraps.  We are in the process of finding someone who can lead biogas generator workshops in the village. 

We are also investigating the use of solar panels.  Recently there has been a breakthrough in South Africa – at the University of Johannesburg – a team there discovered a new solar panel that will be cheaper and, at the same time, more effective.  So, this is going to impact the whole planet.  The first ones are now being produced in Germany.  I think they will spread everywhere.  We are going to visit Johannesburg at the end of December and will try to get more information to see if we can import them.  We hope to develop a system that will power a fan, radio and an electric light at night, and will still be within the financial reach of the average villager.  Admittedly, this will be a challenge.
 
Microfinance is the seventh point, and a very important aspect of the project.  It is one of the few interventions that has proven successful (on a regular basis) to raise people out of poverty.  It involves giving small loans - $50 to $100 – to the very poor to allow them to operate a micro-enterprise and earn a living. The village has a very good program that we work with closely.  We have donated a laptop computer and accounting software to the NGO that runs the microfinance program and my husband has been training managers in its use for several years now.  We also loaned the organization $20,000 to increase their lending capital – still far less than the amount needed to satisfy the demands of all who want loans.

Arabella: You loan the money to the villagers so that they can engage in some kind of money-making enterprise?

Tara: Exactly.  It is a very effective system.  It started in Bangladesh, and has proven to be the best way to help people overcome poverty with dignity.  They can do anything.  Some people just buy a sack of rice, other people sell fish, other people start a little garden – you know, whatever they can do that will start some profit and then generate more profit.  Women are more effective.  I think that 70% of the people that borrow the money are women, and it has also been proven that they are much more effective in returning the money.  But in general about 99% are returning the money. 

They have a system in place to insure that people get the support and training, and so that they will return the money.  Every week they have to come to a meeting place – gather in groups – and they give the money they owe from that week.  If they don’t pay, the others from their group have to cover that money.  In other words, if I’m in a group and you don’t have the money, I have to pay for you – and vice versa.  That’s been very effective because everybody knows they have to support each other.  Tanzania is very community oriented…people are very community oriented.  So, it’s a very good system – everybody knows that they have to pay back.  And they do.  And once they return those fifty dollars after six months, then they can apply for a hundred, a hundred and fifty, then two hundred – up to three hundred dollars.  We have so many people on the waiting list to get microfinance that we just cannot answer them all.  But it’s a system that works.

The eighth item is the support of AIDS orphans and HIV-positive people… people that are in extreme need.  Starting with AIDS orphans, it’s been a tragedy as many people are aware of the situation with AIDS in sub-Saharan African countries.  Many Africans are contracting the disease – many young people between twenty and thirty years old, that’s a generation that is dying.  And Tanzanian families are big, so they leave sometimes five, six, seven kids behind.  It’s just a devastating situation. 

As I said before, the community likes to help.  So, they – like the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles – will take in those kids, but they don’t have the money to feed their own, much less new children.  So the program works through sponsoring children.  People in Europe and America, they give us twenty-five dollars a month and we ensure that those kids have food, and can go to school – that they have uniforms for the school (which they need) and some supplies and health coverage.  You know, the basics.  And those children live with their relatives, because they accept them if they have the sponsorship money coming in.  We have been implementing this program now for four years in Musoma, the big town that has about 100,000 inhabitants.  We want to start this program in Kinesi as well.  The number of AIDS orphans is so big that we can only do so much. 

We have been supporting a clinic in Musoma that has developed a natural project to help HIV-positive patients have a better life.  They use natural medicines that will extend their patients’ lives and improve their immune systems; we are working to bring this project to Kinesi.  This October, eleven “holographic healers” from the Midwest will be joining us in Tanzania to do a research study with AIDS patients using energy healing techniques.

The last element is sanitation.  Sanitation was funny for us.  We had a meeting with some community representatives, about a year ago, and told them of our desire to support them to overcome poverty and live a more abundant life.  We asked them which were the main issues that they wanted addressed.  The first thing was water.  The second was malaria and the third, education.  And when we mentioned sanitation, they said, “What do you mean sanitation?”  They didn’t even know what we were talking about!  There’s no plumbing system – a couple of people have some plumbing in their own houses, but there’s no system.  People carry buckets from the lake to their house or sometimes they gather water from the roof.  Many people just go to the bushes, or have an outside latrine.  So, it will be really something to help them improve their sanitation system!  Something we can do in the long run.

Just to summarize, these are nine elements we gathered from reading a lot of books and studying approaches to ending poverty.  What was in our original methodology was that we would use only natural, organic, and sustainable alternatives.  We studied this very deeply, we talked to the people in Africa, we saw what they wanted, and we agreed upon what would be sustainable and effective.  So far, it’s going well! 

We believe that in five to seven years we will have addressed at least the basics of all nine issues in Kinesi.  The idea is that this will be a sustainable model for other villages.  We know of other villages in the area that are already interested.  We hope that they can come to Kinesi and get training in all these things that we are doing and import the ideas to their villages.

Arabella: You briefly elaborated the grave problem of malaria –and the use of neem tree tincture. I also read in your website about “primary water” as accessed by drilling into rock deep within the earth.  Why are these solutions so difficult for the world to implement?

Tara: Well, they are revolutionary, for one thing.  Let me start with the Neem drops and malaria.  The reason why I got involved in trying to find a solution for malaria – to find a way to prevent it – was because one of our coworkers there had twins….one of them died of malaria.  And he wrote me, and said, “Ma’am, I hope you will find a way to help us with this.”  And, really, I was just overwhelmed, as you can imagine. 

I decided to do research on line to find more information.  Finally, we came across the use of Neem drops in a clinic in Kenya, at a homeopathic clinic where they had been using it for some time.  So, we just decided to experiment, and it’s working very well.  Why other people are not using it….we’re finding a problem with mainstream medicine accepting alternative medicine.  We wrote a wonderful article – mostly written by an MD who came with us last time, and whom we supported – on Neem’s benefits and on how we’re using the Neem drops successfully. 

But when I sent that article to important organizations on the prevention of malaria, they basically dismissed it.  It’s too alternative!  Homeopathy is not considered real medicine.  And so we have made a decision to grow slowly.  That’s our approach.  And it will prove itself useful, and it will grow at its own rhythm.  But, yeah, it’s hard to see this important information dismissed…..and, of course, we still need to do a lot of research.  We know Neem tincture has no significant secondary effects, and we know it’s been useful in prevention and treatment of malaria, but we still need to do more research. 

We are working with a doctor in the area who is implementing the studies. The local government has already expressed an interest in the use of Neem drops…  so, maybe in a couple of years, you and I will talk again and I will tell you something very different!

And primary water – my husband could tell you more about it – it’s a very revolutionary approach to drill into rock where there is an abundant supply of water inside the earth that has never seen the sun.  I mean, regular hydrologists – they think this is crazy.  But there has been a great deal of research and practical application done by a small number of people that clearly demonstrates the potential of the idea. 
Lyn and I are planning to make a movie and to write a book in the next few years about the subject.  So, it’s another one of these pioneer ideas and amazing opportunities, we think, for humanity – if it proves to work! 

Arabella: Has your education at SBGI broadened your scope of what can be done in Tanzania?

Tara:  Yes.  It’s one of the areas where I want to grow more.  I want to bring a prenatal and perinatal understanding to the area where we work in Tanzania.  I have started; I gave a talk at the main hospital in town, in Musoma, to a group of nurses.  And I visited the hospital and learned how they’re giving birth.  I saw what they’re doing, and gave them some ideas about how to support a prenatal program and how to support birth there.  So, a first step has been taken, and I want to keep growing toward bringing what I have learned at SBGI, and from working with Ray Castellino, to Tanzania!  Judyth Weaver, the founding Chair of the Somatic Psychology Program at SBGI, will be joining us in January.  

Arabella: What can our readers do to support your efforts?

Tara: There are different ways you can support us.  One is to, first, know what we are doing.  Then, people can sponsor children, donate some money to support different projects, bring ideas that they have of how to implement what we’re doing or on new technologies. They can even come with us.  Every year we take a few volunteers with us.  And they get to see what is happening there and to have an experience.  There is always work to do.  But volunteers need to be aware of the health risks involved in visiting an African country.

And the last thing that people can do is to volunteer here.  We are all volunteers in this organization.  No one is charging any money.  So, we are always in need of people that would like to do fundraising or media communication, for instance.  That would be a blessing for us!  To have somebody that would like to send articles or write about what we do and put it out there so that other people know about us – that would be wonderful!