Eliya Wilbert, VICOBA Plus Lead Facilitator in Tanzania & New Hope for Girls Dad

Tanzania 🇹🇿

Meet Eliya
New Hope for Girls is a loving home for nearly 60 girls rescued from modern slavery, abandonment, child marriage, and other forms of gender-based violence in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As Consoler’s husband, supporter, and encourager, Eliya Wilbert is a vital ally in this mission, managing finances, helping run the household, and celebrating Consoler’s accomplishments. Eliya also has an important role in ushering in societal changes as he brings new healthy theological teaching about equity and empowerment for girls and women to church leaders, and addresses faulty thinking that allows abuse of girls and women to persist. He is also a caring and proud dad to the many girls in the New Hope for Girls family.

In addition, Eliya is the lead VICOBA Plus facilitator in Tanzania, bringing expertise and insights to the wider community. Eliya’s passion and skill for community organizing makes him a highly effective facilitator, cultivating a thriving VICOBA Plus hub in Tanzania. The community strength built through his work with VICOBA Plus provides a local network and support system for the NHGO family. Eliya is skilled at building connections, and his work as a lead VICOBA Plus facilitator enables him to nurture the cross-pollination of ideas, resources, skills, and perspectives with other community groups.

Eliya, in collaboration with other VICOBA Plus Lead Facilitators, is also working to advance gender empowerment in his own context. The Elimika Women’s Cooperative and VICOBA Plus group in Tanzania is a group of women who dream, innovate, challenge, and persist together. They build each other up through shared goals, trust, and hard work, and are creating the futures they want for themselves and their community through group savings. This financial and social security they receive from each other is shifting gender roles as they redefine what is possible together.

• Continue expanding the influence of the VICOBA Plus hub in Tanzania and the broader region — identifying and coaching emerging leaders, and forming and strengthening new groups.
• Forever Home – Invest in the Capital Campaign for a well-designed home and training center for New Hope for Girls. The long-time dream of the New Hope for Girls family, and the next step in their journey toward financial self-sufficiency, is the construction of a ‘Forever Home’ for their bustling household. Currently, the family rents a four-bedroom house in Dar es Salaam, which is bursting at the seams. A parcel of land for a new house has been purchased, and architectural designs for a ‘Forever Home’ have been finalized. The preliminary and first phase of construction have been completed as well as substructure and foundations. This house will be well-equipped to serve the family and their unique needs, which means more energy and capacity for Consoler and Eliya to support the girls and young women in their home, and space and stability to bring peace of mind and joy to the entire family.
  Learn more about Forever Home
• Support New Hope for Girls with education costs, household expenses, or unrestricted funding to meet the needs of this incredible family and provide resources for vulnerable girls in Dar es Salaam.