Isaya Oleporuo was a teenager when he and his brother walked through the night for days to pull their 13-year-old sister Katayai out of an abusive, forced marriage she had been taken into in rural Tanzania. That rescue, carried out with his brother Nguvu Lukumay, would eventually grow into a Columbus, Ohio-based nonprofit that has since helped hundreds of Maasai girls attend school instead of walking down the aisle as children.
A Rescue That Became a Movement
According to The Columbus Dispatch, Oleporuo was inspired to fight child marriage in part because his own older sister was forced into marriage at age 14, with a groom old enough to be her grandfather. Years later, he and Lukumay rescued their younger sister Katayai from her abusive new husband's home after she had been married off at just 13. The Osotuwa Foundation describes that same rescue in starker terms, recounting Katayai as pregnant and being brought to school by her brothers after being taken away from the forced marriage, according to Osotuwa Foundation.
The Dispatch reports that it was this courageous action that would lead to the Osotuwa Foundation's conception. After sending Katayai to school, mothers throughout the village began bringing their own young daughters to Oleporuo, hoping he could help get them to safety and an education, the paper reports. Katayai herself eventually married a man of her own choosing, and Oleporuo has called that wedding the best — a joyful contrast, the Dispatch notes, to the marriage she had escaped.
Cows, Currency and a Cultural Practice
Oleporuo told the Dispatch that it is standard practice among Maasai fathers in Tanzania to marry off their daughters as children in exchange for cows, which serve as one of the main forms of currency in Maasai culture. He has argued that girls who finish school and find jobs can ultimately buy more cows than the amount their fathers would have received for marrying them off young — reframing education itself as the better financial bet.
That argument is borne out in national data. Tanzania's child-marriage rate before age 18 fell from 39% in 1997 to 29% in 2022, according to childmarriagedata.org. The same data shows prevalence of 55% among girls with no schooling compared with just 8% among those with secondary education or higher, and the gap holds along economic lines too, with 55% prevalence among girls in the poorest households versus 12% in the richest. A UNICEF profile found Tanzania is home to an estimated 6.6 million women and girls who married as children, with three in 10 young women having married before adulthood, per data.unicef.org.
From Eluai Village to a Columbus Nonprofit
Oleporuo met Tricia Allenby in Eluai village, Tanzania, in August 2019, and she later helped establish the Osotuwa Foundation as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Dispatch reports. Allenby, now a member of the foundation's board of directors, regularly visits the girls in East Africa, while Lukumay serves as the foundation's program director in Tanzania. Oleporuo, who earned a bachelor's degree in international affairs from Ohio State University, now resides in Columbus.
The foundation says it has helped approximately 380 Maasai girls either graduate or currently attend school. It costs $600 per year to send each girl to boarding school, with that annual sponsorship covering school supplies, uniforms, transportation, meals and more for the entire year, the organization says. Each girl receives eight years of education through the program, and 150 girls currently need sponsors, according to the foundation's figures reported by the Dispatch.
Sponsors and a Return to the Village
Board member Brenda Ruegsegger sponsors four girls through the foundation and told the Dispatch that girls across cultures share the same intellect, curiosity and delight in life. The foundation also holds an annual reception where sponsored girls return to the village to share what they have learned and how they have grown, giving sponsors and families a direct look at the program's impact. Donations can be made at osotuwa.org/support-us, per the foundation.
The challenge Oleporuo is working against remains deeply uneven across Tanzania. Child marriage is most prevalent in rural areas, at 38% compared with 14% in cities, and by region it is most common in Tabora and Simiyu, at 53% each, followed by Katavi at 51% and Shinyanga at 46%, according to childmarriagedata.org. Separately, Jane Sembuche has said 29.1% of Tanzanian women aged 20 to 24 had married before turning 18, as reported by ippmedia.co.tz.
Economic Empowerment as Prevention
Stakeholders in Tanzania have called for greater investment in girls' education, vocational training and employment opportunities, describing economic empowerment as a vital tool in the fight against child marriage, according to Tanzania Insight. The outlet reports that poverty and social norms continue to drive the practice despite existing government legal and policy measures. At a Dar es Salaam dialogue organized by World Vision Tanzania through its AHADI, BLOOM and Youth Ready projects to mark the International Day of the Girl Child, one beneficiary, Sauda Haji, said she rejected a marriage proposal because she wanted to follow her ambitions after training helped her understand her rights.
Tanzania's Law of Marriage Act, in the version supplied by the country's Office of the Attorney General, sets a minimum marriage age of 18 for males and 15 for females, while allowing a court to authorize marriage from age 14 in special circumstances. The same text states that a person who knowingly participates in a marriage ceremony involving someone below the minimum age can, on conviction, face up to two years in prison. For Oleporuo, whose work began with a single rescue on a dark road in Eluai village, the numbers and statutes are backdrop to a much simpler mission: keeping girls like his sisters in school and out of marriages they never chose.
