STAESA takes all of its incidents very seriously. In our 16 years of operation, we have had only one bad incident. Many of our volunteers came upon this blog which states that STAESA is a corrupt and fraudulent organization. We hope everyone will take the time to read the blog post, as well as STAESA's response to the incident. If you have any questions and would like to further investigate this, please contact us.
This is the exact text from the blog claiming STAESA is a corrupt organization:
My friend and I decided that after graduating from University decided to backpack through Eastern Africa and volunteer somewhere along the way in an HIV/AIDS clinic. We choose Tanzania because of its abundance of volunteer program and its apparent openness to Westerners- but our experience taught us that not all organizations are as they seem. If you are venturing off to a random country that you don’t know much about make sure you spend the time investigating any potential volunteer programs. And while its great be be organized before you go, it is sometimes better to arrange your own volunteering once you arrive and survey the scene.
We arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital city, after vacationing in Tofu, Mozambique for the week. After 2 short days in Dar es Salaam, we headed to Arusha – a city in Tanzania which is the gateway for much of the Safari tourism (i.e. Ngorongoro Crater) to begin volunteering in an HIV/AIDS clinic. Unfortunately, our organization, Student Travel and Exposure South Africa (STAESA) turned out to be fraudulent- to make an understatement. We were supposed to be staying with a host family and our host was supposed to be a former Amnesty International Director – but our host turned out to be STAESA’s Tanzanian program director and an Evangelical priest who was on an Evangelical mission in Europe. His house was located on the Accounting institute’s campus, as our host was the institute’s spiritual leader. His wife Esther and their 2 young children aged 2 and 3 were left to look after us.
Our living conditions were interesting to say the least. In short, my friend and I slept in a single bed, in a room crowded with religious artifacts and all of the family’s possessions (including pots and pans and diapers). In addition, the only words their children knew in English were ‘baby jesus loves me’ – the tunes of which we also woke up to in the morning. Funnily enough – they claimed not to be a religious organization even though all of their country directors were reverends.
Who is STAESA?STAESA is an organization that charges volunteers a fee to volunteer. This is not uncommon for many volunteer organizations in Africa that usually funnel the money received from volunteers back into the community and organization in order to help their programs run. Unfortunately, this family saw the opportunity for volunteers as as a money making scheme. Our contract said that we would only pay upon satisfaction of the program. But from the moment we woke up after our first night we were badgered for money. Esther asked us for the equivalent of $60 for breakfast which included a boiled banana and a slice of bread and then asked us when we were going to pay our $1000 U.S. volunteer fee. We told her that once we got a chance to see the program we would pay them.
After being walked to an ATM and pressured to withdraw another $150 U.S., we were escorted to our volunteer program. We shortly found out that the volunteer program did not exist. Their “clinic/office” was an internet cafe and computer training centre and our training involved sending out e-mails home. After seeing the lack of facilities/ volunteer structure, we decided to try and find our own proper volunteer work – which we managed to secure in an incredible HIV/AIDS clinic run by an American doctor who took pity on us after hearing our story. We spent our first day at the clinic seeing patients, listening to their stories pre and post testing and receiving an excellent presentation on AIDS in Tanzania.
While we learned a ton in only a few days at the Arusha HIV/ AIDS clinic, the situation with STEASA turned from bad to worse. We decided to let our host family know that we found another volunteer program and that we appreciated their help and hospitality but no longer wanted to volunteer or live with them. As soon as we let them in on our plans, the organization began sending us and our parents threatening emails demanding money, stating that they hoped the supernatural power of G-d would save us. They threatened us saying that they had representatives looking for us in Arusha and considering there were not many white, blond hair girls, it would not have been very hard to find us in a small city. STAESA also insisted we return to our host family and apologize to them because we had shamed them in the name of god.
As soon as the threatening e-mails came pouring in, the Canadian embassy in Tanzania and the Tanzanian embassy in Canada got involved advising us to leave the country pronto. They informed us that even if the organization was a sham, the Tanzanian government would accuse us of breaching our contract and we could be put in jail. On top of everything else, when we refused to pay them (because we never ended up working for them) they threatened to block our Tanzanian visa’s and deport us back to Canada. So we had no other choice but to flee Tanzania the next morning for Nairobi, Kenya (a 6 hour bus ride away). I never in my wildest dreams imagined that Nairobi, one of the most dangerous cites in the world, would be our safe haven.
We ended up spending a few days in Nairobi relaxing before heading off to Malawi in search of a more reputable volunteer organization. We e-mailed some random organization that we had read about in Malawi. While the volunteer program no longer existed they, unknowingly to us, passed on our names to another organization in Blantyre, Malawi. When we arrived in Blantyre and checked into our hostel “Doogles”, the only hostel in town at the time, we got a knock on our door from a member of the Joshua Orphan Care Trust. She heard that we were looking to volunteer and she offered us not only free volunteering at a feeding centre and orphanage but the directors home for a month while she was away in England for vacation.
Our volunteer experience in Malawi was life changing and the people were wonderful. But most importantly, my experience volunteering taught me the important lesson that some of the best things in life are free.
Apparently two girls from Canada in 2005 had a “life-threatening”, horrible experience with our organization in Tanzania. All the information about the girls’ incident can be found above. Today, all the volunteers, directors, and coordinators of STAESA have come together to repudiate the severity of the accused claims and hand you the truth.
The intro paragraphs of the girls’ account state exactly what should have happened. The two girls from Canada were assigned to a HIV/AIDS clinic in Tanzania that previous volunteers had volunteered at with no problems. The two girls were to stay with the former Amnesty International Director, but ended up staying with the STAESA Tanzania Program Coordinator. Although the original plans were settled for the girls to stay with the Director, problems arose the day before the girls arrived when the STAESA Office received a call from the Former Amnesty International Director; the director stated that she was having personal family issues. The Director stated she would be unable to host the girls: this was an issue STAESA could not control as every person has the right to deny such accommodation; the household seemed too unstable for the girls to settle in. Therefore, due to unforeseen circumstances and out of the interest of safety, STAESA made the decision to host the girls with the Tanzania Program Coordinator.
The next complaint was based on the poor quality of living conditions, which consisted of a single bed, religious artifacts, and objects of the family. STAESA would like to remind that volunteers are living in AFRICA, and part of the volunteer experience is for the volunteer to immerse himself/herself into the African culture. Part of the African culture is poorer conditions than one is accustomed to, as well as an exposure to religion. Tolerance and acceptance of another culture’s views is a tenet that is essential for volunteers to grasp and for one’s experience altogether. STAESA believes that a STAESA volunteer must live in the same conditions as the people they are helping to truly understand and bond with the people that they will correspond with during their stay in Africa.
STAESA would also like to reiterate that it is not a religious organization, nor does it affiliate with religious organizations. It is typical in Africa that the majority of the people are Christian, so often reverends and priests will also be leaders, headmasters, and district leaders of their community. It is almost inevitable that a volunteer will work with leaders holding a religion; however, STAESA does not directly correspond with religious organizations and religious factions. Rather, religion is part of African culture, so sometimes the people volunteers work with will hold a religion. Just as if one goes to an Arab state, he can expect the majority to be from a Muslim background.
The fourth paragraph says STAESA is an organization that charges the volunteer a fee to volunteer. Yes, STAESA charges a reasonable fee to volunteer so that volunteers would funnel money back into the host families, community, and pay for small administrative costs. If you do not believe STAESA’s volunteer fee is reasonable, please look at the Price Comparison page on our website. STAESA’s contract with volunteers is that volunteers pay their fees upon their arrival, regardless of their satisfaction (although numerous volunteers have had positive experiences in Tanzania working with the same coordinator at the same HIV/AIDS clinic).
STAESA cannot believe that the girls got the right exchange rate when they stated they were badgered for an equivalent of $60 for breakfast (STAESA chooses/interviews the correct host families under strict regulations before selecting them to host). The host family has every right to ask for their money, because they cannot be expected to accommodate volunteers (added expense to their already limited income) before actually receiving some form of monetary reimbursement.
STAESA cannot understand how the girls claimed that they had no volunteer placement emplaced for them, because that is a very ludicrous statement. STAESA sets up each individual with proper volunteer placement according to the preference of the individual. First of all, when the girls refer to STAESA, we assert that they are referring to the Tanzania coordinator. The STAESA office never contacted the girls with threatening emails to send money and never threatened them with God’s name. The STAESA office only desired to investigate the issue and inquire what happened; however, STAESA was unaware of the surrounding issues because the girls never replied to our subsequent emails.
At the moment, STAESA’s office was unaware that the girls contacted the Canadian embassy and that they had left to Kenya. STAESA was forced into a problem where they could not solve anything: due to the lack of cooperation from the girls in failing to reply to STAESA, the problem only escalated. STAESA never received any information from the Canadian embassy, and such claim that the Tanzania government would intervene and put the girls into jail is another ludicrous statement. The fact that the Canadian embassy ordered the girls to leave Tanzania proves that the contract legally was indeed broken and thus, under legalities, the government reserved the right to imprison the girls at the highest level of punishment. However, in reality, this scenario is very unlikely; the Canadian embassy would have directed the girls to the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Tanzania even IF the girls’ claim of contacting the Canadian embassy lies true.
Although the girls were, acceded by legally binding contract, supposed to stay with STAESA and pay their reasonable fee no later than when they had arrived, such desired result was not the case. Regardless of whether the girls personally desired to pay based on satisfaction (which is contradictory to the legal contract and to many typical legal contracts), the girls acquiesced to STAESA’s terms and conditions once such agreement was formulated before their arrival. Since the girls absconded to a different country, the girls abruptly abrogated their contract without any legal authority or permission to do so. Reluctantly, STAESA absolved these girls without pursuing further litigation in the best interest of both parties. The girls on their blog just explicitly admitted that they broke the legal contract between STAESA and them; therefore, they reserve no right to accuse STAESA of not providing the expected services and accommodations.
Also, the logic of leaving from Tanzania to Nairobi for safety is skewed logic in itself, because like she mentioned, Nairobi is a dangerous city in a very unstable country. Arusha, the city they were emplaced in, is only about 200 km away from Nairobi. How could it take six hours for a bus to drive that distance? (STAESA has verified this distance through Google Maps). There is much doubt raised upon the report being highly aggrandized and accentuated, and that the situation could have played out much more differently if the girls had acted in the correct tolerant, amenable, and transparent matter.
Then the girls finally stated their adage, “sometimes the best things in life are free”, but the truth of the matter is that they failed to account the monetary costs involved when they stayed with their hostel, and paid for their own food. If this were the case for STAESA, in which the girls would pay for their own accommodations and food, then STAESA would also basically be free: we only charge mainly for the host family, their accommodations, and food (for more information, please look at our Financial Records Page).
In the end, despite the other volunteers’ refusals for the STAESA Office to do so, STAESA woefully fired the Tanzania coordinator, despite his denial of the girls’ claims and successful experiences with other volunteers. STAESA sent apology emails to the girls for such problems even though it was out of our hand at this point. The girls’ specific idiosyncrasies had led them to their situation: in STAESA’s 16 years of operation, this was the only one negative incident STAESA has had to suffer, unfortunately even to this day.
For more confirmation upon STAESA’s legitimacy and success, please look to the Testimonies Page on our website. Many volunteers who have worked with us are shocked and angry at the girls’ immaturity in dealing with the situation: written testimonies with volunteer contact information are available if one desires to confirm such information.
Although what has happened has passed, STAESA would still like to apologize for any confusion, stress, and antipathy that this incident has instigated. STAESA is a professional African registered NGO which has much success working with many volunteers around the world in several African countries. We are not comfortable with nor tolerate negative, fraudulent claims attacking our organization, especially when this incident is one of six years ago.
On behalf of STAESA’s directors, volunteers, and staff, STAESA strongly hopes you understand the truth and believe our true mission: please do not worry about this aspersion and come work with us if you do truly desire to ameliorate such deplorable living conditions and to have an amazing African volunteer experience.
If you still have more questions or additional concerns to report to STAESA, please contact us, and we will get back to you quickly.
