About Us

BIBI JANN CHILDREN'S CARE TRUST

…Is named for American journalist Jann Mitchell-Sandström, who in 2001 began building - with American and Swedish donations - a pre-school in the village of Mbagala, a suburb of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa. She regularly visits Dar with her professor-physician husband, Eric Sandström, an AIDS clinician and researcher with Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and Muhimbili University Hospital in Dar. The couple lives in Stockholm.

THE TRUST OVERSEES:
Bibi Jann Academy - Serving 100 students (all of them poor, many of them AIDS orphans) in pre-school through Grade 4. The children learn English and receive meals and snacks (for some the only food they get). They also receive medical and dental care. The school will eventually go through Grade 7. Community seminars and classes are also held here. Funded by tuitions, grants from corporations and charities, and individuals.

GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA - Consisting of 25 grandmothers who have lost their adult children to AIDS and now must raise their 80+ orphaned grandchildren. The program helps with food, clothing, medical care, school fees, etc. through donations. We seek to help the grandmothers ("bibis" in Kiswahili") become self-sustaining through craft sales and various small businesses (sewing and tailoring, soy drink production, etc.) Funded by sponsors of individual bibis, donations to the general bibi fund, grants from corporations and charities.

The Gerrit Brokx/FAWCO House - Sheltering grandmothers and grandchildren who would otherwise be homeless. The walled complex includes bedrooms, toilets, livingroom/meeting space, boy's dorm, director's house, volunteer/visitor guestrooms, kitchen and four street-front shops for bibi businesses. Should a G-2-G bibi die, her orphans will be cared for by those living in this bibi house. The complex was built with a Dutch trust donation, money raised by the Federation of American Women's Clubs Overseas (ex-pats around the world) and individuals.

BJCCT is registered in Tanzania; 501 (C) 3 status in the United States is pending. Accounts are kept in Portland, Oregon; Stockholm, Sweden; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and are overseen by the international audit firm of KPMG in Dar.
Sponsors include schools and churches in the U.S., international schools in Sweden, individuals worldwide, Rotary and Lions clubs, global American Women's Clubs, Dartmouth Medical School, and in Dar KPMG, Charity Goat Races, Corona Society, Diplomatic Spouses Group, DarDar, and more.