By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — When she was 19, Anne Wells spent a college semester abroad in the African nation of Tanzania.

Now, her own college-age daughter travels to Africa to help her mother with the nonprofit, Unite the World with Africa Foundation (UNITE), a group Wells founded in 2008, working to help people in the country she fell in love with as a teenager.

“It is where my heart calls me,” Wells said. “I feel very, very comfortable there. I feel that every single dollar we raise can make a difference. We have the ability to make a change there.”

On Friday, March 31, Tanzania is coming to Westport when UNITE brings an African artist, musician and others together for “An Evening of Africa,” a fundraising event for the philanthropic group. The event’s focus is the Unite Food program, founded by Wells in 2020 to help small-scale farmers grow and preserve quality food for the Tanzanian people.

“All they have is what they grow on their small farms … they have no way to store their food safely,” she said, and when their annual harvest is gone, their hunger persists.

“We buy their harvest at above-market rates, and provide them with the technology to store their food for up to three years — maize and grains and rice.”

Unite Food built a processing plant to help preserve crops, investing $254,000 in the project, Wells said. “Funded to date just by family and friends, [Unite Food] addresses a lot of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.”

Funding and volunteer work for all of the foundation’s programs have been accomplished mostly with the help of family and friends so far, many of them from Westport, Wells said. 

One Westport friend who has been involved with the foundation for 10 years, Nicole Gerber, a member of the group’s Board of Directors. Gerber also volunteers for Wakeman Town Farm’s sustainability center.

“I am passionate about both the foundation and Unite Africa,” Gerber said. “The work that they are doing is so meaningful.”

Gerber travels to Tanzania every two years or so, and is especially proud of the work that the foundation does through the Unite Scholars program.

“It is our work supporting our scholars that has enabled UNITE to reach communities in the remotest areas of Tanzania that larger NGOs [non-governmental organizations, or non-profits] have difficulty accessing,” she said. “Not only does UNITE work to improve the lives of our scholars and their families, but through them we are helping to improve the quality of life for their entire villages.”

Other programs that are part of UNITE include an environmental conservation and reforestation program called Unite Hummingbird; the Brave Widow program that provides seed grants, business education, and mentoring support to entrepreneurial widows, and a revolving loan program to help generate small businesses.

Among the other Westporters who help with the foundation are Niki Gorman, Tanya Murphy and David Wells, Anne Wells’s husband.

With their roles in the UNITE foundation work and other volunteer positions, it would appear challenging for Wells and Gerber to find time to do much else.

But a week before their “A Night of Africa” event, both were on the West Coast with their daughters — Gerber on a college trip to California and Wells to help her recently graduated daughter move to Seattle. Both of the younger women also have played a large part in their mothers’ work in Africa.

Gerber’s daughter, Scarlett, after a three-week trip to Africa that, among other things, included visits to several hospitals, has been inspired to become a doctor with the hope of returning to Africa or somewhere else where her help is needed, her mother said.

And Wells’s daughter, Lila, who has been traveling to Africa with her mother since she was 12, started the  UNITE Passion Project, a series of nearly 100 videos of professionals in various fields speaking about what they do and why they love it. The project aims to help young Africans discover what they can do and what they can be in the future.

Both women are fostering a passion for philanthropy in their own children, as they share a passion for education and independence in the African communities where they volunteer.

“We can be impactful,” Wells said. “There is so much work to be done.”

An Evening of Africa: Cocktails + Conversation will be held Friday, March 31, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Wakeman Town Farm, 134 Cross Highway. Tickets, from $125 to $2,500, can be reserved online by clicking here.

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Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.