As far as homes go, it wasn’t much.
Just one room, maybe 12 feet by 12 feet. No kitchen. No bathroom. One twin-size mattress, an inch or two thick at the most. A portable burner in one corner along with a couple dishes. A stack of journals.
Vehicles could not reach the humble structure, located on the other side of a water drainage system and accessible only on foot across a makeshift, wooden bridge.
Crowding inside with a trio of teenage brothers and their family members who lived there, all of them barely able to move?
Eight visitors from the NIU Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KNPE).
They’d come to Tanzania to help promote gender empowerment through sport – to use the power of sport to foster social change – by sharing best practices around engaging girls and women. They’d come to coach the coaches. They’d come to lead youth in games on the playing field. They’d come to practice their skills. They’d come to learn from others.
But this? This was different.
“We were invited to go into the homes of two groups of people affiliated with our partner organization, and it was meant to be a showcase of, ‘This is how we live here. This is what our everyday looks like,’ ” says Jenn Jacobs, NIU associate professor of sport psychology.
“Our students had a really hard time with that. They felt that it was a very invasive experience, and some of them talked about being really uncomfortable.”
Nonetheless, “these three young men are beaming and proud to show us their place, even though we went in with our American mindset of, ‘Oh, this must be uncomfortable because they maybe shouldn’t be proud by our standards.’
“It was a powerful moment for our students to reflect on. We’re coming in with American biases – which is OK; we’re not trying to deny those – but how those boys were feeling! Even when I look back on the pictures, they’ve got these huge smiles on their faces and they’re really just full of awe to be able to show people their home and how they moved here, 17 hours away from their little village, just so they can go to school.”
Later, Jacobs and KNPE Chair Steve Howell debriefed their young Engage Global travelers through their unfamiliar emotions: “I think that sense of discomfort is always a good thing for our students to experience,” Jacobs says, “because that’s the zone where they get to push their growth.”
Howell shares his colleague’s appreciation for the African encounter.
One of the three teen brothers wanted to keep talking afterward, Howell says, so he quickly swapped his school uniform for regular attire and accompanied the NIU group on their walk across the bridge to the bus.
An adult-age brother – a teacher at the school – zipped over on his motorcycle to join in the chatter along the route.
“They’re such a happy, thankful-for-what-they-have culture, and it was an eye-opening and a very awakening experience,” Howell says, “even more so for the students because it really puts things in perspective on, ‘Wow, we don’t have it so bad.’ ”
LANDING AUG. 6 IN TANZANIA, students Tylo Blackburn, Marissa Fetters, Jordyn King and Izaiah Webb and KNPE double-alumna Huntleigh Wozniak and triple-alumnus Tim Mack joined Jacobs and Howell in delivering Part 2 of ENVEST Tanzania: Vijana Umoja Pamoja, which is Swahili for “Youth United Together.”
Part 1 took place in DeKalb and Chicago from April 17 through May 1.
Visitors from Tanzania came to the United States for two weeks of activities that included attending KNPE classes, sport practices, sport matches, movie screenings and reflection and journaling. They also spent a morning at DeKalb High School, participating in a discussion with female students there, and had a chance on campus to socialize with NIU international students.
During the second week in Chicago, the Tanzanians worked with grant partners such as the Chicago Fire, the Chicago Red Stars and the Chicago Hounds.
The program was funded by a grant awarded from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (through its Sports Diplomacy Division) to the Center for Sport Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, which teamed with Jacobs and Howell.
For most of the travelers, Jacobs says, the trip was a shock to the system. Few had ever left their tiny village before taking a 12-hour bus ride to the Tanzanian capital to secure passports.
But the miles on the road and in the air were purposeful.
“The purpose of the grant is mutual learning, so our goal is to learn as much from them as they learn from us,” Jacobs says.
“We gave them a glimpse into how we do sport programming and how we engage kids in meaningful, developmental experiences, and how that works in our culture, to see if they have opportunities to replicate or adapt some of that to use in their culture,” she adds. “We also wanted to learn about how they do things, and what they see in our programming that could be improved by some of their customs or practices.”
JORDYN KING ALSO HAD never traveled overseas.
She came to NIU in the fall of 2022 to complete her fifth year of NCCA Division I women’s soccer – the additional season thanks to COVID-19’s disruption of college athletics – and now is pursuing her M.S. in Kinesiology and Physical Education with a specialty in Sport and Exercise Psychology.
“I chose to pursue this degree because of my own personal experience as a student-athlete,” says King, who grew up in Menifee, Calif.
At her first two universities, she says, she saw teammates struggling with mental health issues. She also saw that in the mirror.
“Girls were crying for help, and nobody was there to help them. There were no resources, and I felt like we were only cared about as athletes and not people. It wasn’t until I got here that I saw a difference,” King says. “My goal is honestly to help people so they don’t have to suffer in silence. The game feels like 90% mental, so it’s just as important to train your mental side as it is your physical.”
NIU head coach Michael O’Neill and his assistants understand, King says.
“He speaks up about mental health and things like that. He cares,” she says, adding that “since I was 6, I’ve had over 16 coaches, whether club or college, so I’ve seen the ins and outs. I’ve had more bad coaches than I’ve had good coaches. I’ve learned from all the good and bad coaches, and I could take a lesson from each one.”
Joining the ENVEST Tanzania trip provided King with a chance to engage with that passion with an international lens – and to realize that she can make positive impacts wherever she lands.
The youth she met in Africa, for example, played sports for sheer enjoyment and not to meet a requirement.
“Over the years, I’ve seen the loss of love for the sport and the game, so to be able to use my life skills and mental skills and implement those into sport in a different way than I’ve ever seen before was really the most exciting thing,” King says.
“It was just honestly eye-opening to be able to see, no matter what their situation was, how content and how happy they were. You didn’t hear anyone complain – not once,” she adds. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I really need to check what I say and what I think, because the world is so much bigger than just living in DeKalb, Ill.’ ”
As language barriers toppled while physical example replaced the need for words and friendly play and competition ensued on the field, King celebrated in an additional way.
“It put things into perspective, especially with working with clients of different nationalities, different values, different beliefs – I may not be able to 100% understand what someone may be going through, but I can learn. I can listen to understand,” she says.
“Just being able to implement mental skills and life skills was a big thing that gave me a whole new perspective on, 1, life and, 2, sport. I needed to see that. I needed to see that soccer is not just a job. Soccer is not just something you use to get through school,” she adds, acknowledging that soccer is a part of her: “The sport has taught me so many different skills and has helped shape me into who I am today.”
King remains grateful for the chance to travel and to promote gender empowerment.
“We got the opportunity to see girls and boys practicing together in both rugby and soccer. I am so used to seeing sports separated by gender, so it was a cool experience to see them compete with one another,” she says.
But, she adds, “I mostly went in with a mindset of wanting to learn from them. I don’t like how, sometimes, ‘Oh, America is the country you have to learn from. We know best.’ I didn’t want it feel that way, so I went in with a humble heart to just learn from them.”
Consequently, she hesitates to explain what she wanted her new friends to learn from her as a visiting teacher.
Her presentations covered the importance of mental health and how coaches cannot solve all of the concerns of their athletes but can offer a support system.
More deeply, she says, “we would ask them, ‘What do you think of Americans?’ – and they always think like money or obesity. I honestly wanted them to learn that we wanted to come experience their culture the way they came and experienced ours. That we were open to learning. That we were open to listening. That we wanted to feel like we’re family.”
Looking forward to her May graduation, King is eager to apply the lessons of ENVEST Tanzania in her future work as a mental performance consultant to athletes.
“I want to start with high school girls because that’s when people make the decision of whether they love the sport enough to continue to play in college or not. Coaches play a big role in that. They have an impact on athletes’ overall well-being and the decisions athletes make,” King says.
“My biggest thing is just to help them keep the love for the sport,” she adds. “I’ve had a lot of negative experiences in sport, and I just want to make positive experiences.”
NIU’S ITINERARY IN TANZANIA was packed.
Jacobs, Howell and Co. visited the Watoto Foundation to see its Boxing Project in action and spent some time with Tanzania Rugby Development.
They ate dinner with the Sports Development Aid leaders. They stopped at the Future Stars Academy for a soccer session. They met with their inspirational partners at SOVOI Sports Academy, a school where they spent a day in classrooms, including some for young people with disabilities.
On Aug. 12 – International World Youth Day – the Huskies traveled to Ilboru Secondary School for a sports bonanza of football, rugby, boxing, traditional games and more.
More than 1,000 children and youth descended on a large, outdoor space, Jacobs says – and, fortunately, nothing went as planned.
“We were just going to run little sport rotations; 25-minute rotations, all morning long. The idea was that our local partners were leading the stations – maybe a soccer station, a boxing station, a basketball station, a volleyball station, lots of different sports – and that we Americans would assist,” she says.
“But true to form, and kind of going with the flow, it ended up that most of us were put in charge of running our own stations – and we found out approximately 30 second before, so that was pretty fun in the sense of, ‘Well, we’ve got a huge language barrier because people in Tanzania speak Swahili and don’t know much English,’ so we just had to be ready to go.”
And ready they were.
“My favorite part was seeing all the students scamper and scurry and be like, ‘Oh, I can do this. Let’s do this,’ and figure out all the ways of, ‘How do I actually connect with kids? Does language matter? No,’ ” Jacobs says. “There’s this idea that sport is a universal language, so they found smile and gestures and then small words that they could teach, and they successfully ran a bunch of sport sessions for kids.”
School visits also brought another reminder of the abject poverty of their hosts; one school’s athletic supplies for as many as 600 students included five soccer balls (all with holes and so thin that they resembled balls of yarn), a boxing bag but no boxing gloves, a small bag of rugby balls and a few cones with rips.
On Aug. 17, two days before their departure for home, NIU’s group visited the Ngorongoro Crater. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site named for a Maasai word meaning “Gift of Life.”
Presentations delivered to the Tanzanian coaches included “Let’s Go Girl: Motivating Youth to Overcome Obstacles through Boxing, “Game On, Girls: Tournament Organization and Fundraising,” “Her Body and Mind: Mental Health and Mindfulness in the Sport Context” and “Vijana Umoja Pamoja: Action Planning, Community Development, Smart Goals.”
Stepping into teaching roles, and doing so in a country so different from home, proved transformational for the U.S. students.
“It hits on a number of different levels,” Howell says. “It gives them a greater appreciation for the things they have – the educational system they have – and it gives them a greater opportunity to think about, ‘How can I use what I’ve learned at NIU? How can I take what I’ve learned and disseminate it to other cultures, whether it’s mindfulness or things like sport business and organizing a tournament?’ ”
Proof of the impact they can make already was on display.
Webb, a graduate research assistant for Project FLEX and a master’s student in counseling, led a workshop on mindfulness during the April portion of the Tanzania program.
Then, during the Aug. 9 visit to Future Stars Academy, the coaches there told NIU’s group about practicing the “Izaiah mindfulness thing.”
“He said, ‘Every morning, when we start work, we come together and we close our eyes, take deep breaths and say we need to be where our feet are,’ and that’s literally something that was a theme of our time here in the U.S.,” Jacobs says. “That’s such a huge, flattering thing. They do this daily in their practice now. It’s not something they thought to showcase, ‘Oh, look at us. Look how good we are. We listen.’ It’s that they’re incorporating these things into their practice and making it meaningful in their own ways.”
Or, she adds, consider the power of making use of whatever’s available.
While trying to interact and connect with students at the school with limited resources, Jacobs started tossing her disposable coffee cup back and forth with her NIU students. Soon, she says, the Tanzanian children joined in the fun.
“And then I just walked away,” Jacobs says, “and Huntleigh played ‘cup’ with this group of students for an hour afterward because they don’t have equipment. You just take whatever you can find, turn it into a game and it’s the best thing ever – and, by the end of the day, the cup was worn and dirty, but it was still their favorite thing of the day.”
Fortunately, some of the grant money paid for new supplies given to the schools, Howell says, adding that KNPE staff also pruned the Anderson Hall equipment room to donate things that were still of use but nearing replacement, such as jump ropes and balls.
But the greatest gift – to both sides – is not material.
“Putting things they learn into practice, and actually seeing and being able to apply those things, they come in as the expert, and I think that, a lot of times, that gives them a new-found sense of confidence,” Howell says. “It’s, ‘Wow, I am an expert in my chosen discipline. I can actually do these things, I can lend this knowledge to other cultures and, hopefully, help them improve, be better and more sustainable.’ When we come together with a common goal and a common theme, things can move forward.”
