PUMZIKA NGO
Let’s pause together.
Join us in expanding access to wellness experiences, mindfulness training and community.
A worldwide effort that began in the heart of Africa.
EVERY RETREAT SEAT WE RUN IS FULLY SCHOLARSHIP FUNDED
Join us in expanding access to wellness experiences, mindfulness training and community.
A worldwide effort that began in the heart of Africa.
EVERY RETREAT SEAT WE RUN IS FULLY SCHOLARSHIP FUNDED
We invite you to share skills and resources to expand access to the tools that transform lives. We are completely secular and science backed in our approach to wellness experiences such as (Silent Retreats, Digital Detox Quiet Retreats, Sound Healing, Breathwork, Mindfulness Training).
Three ways to fund access. Each one has a defined cost, a named group of people, and a report when it is finished.
One person. One retreat. Transport, meals, materials, and a stipend for the time away.
Seven weeks with the group you choose: Lawyer cohorts, medical students at a university, nurses at a hospital, a cohort of youth leaders, a team of therapists, or people in recovery at a partner house. We send you the completion report and the participant feedback, in their words.
Twelve people, Friday to Sunday, at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Silence, guided practice, fresh food, and a full digital detox.
Open Seat is for retreat companies, yoga studios, meditation centres and wellness lodges anywhere in the world. You commit a share of annual revenue or a fixed amount per booking. In return you receive quarterly impact reports, photographs and participant stories you are free to use in your own communications.
Pumzika Retreats is the founding example. A committed percentage of every booking goes to Pumzika Tanzania.
If you already spend meaningfully on retreats each year, commit a portion of it. Invest in your own wellness and cause real change in the lives of others.
The entry point is the price of a single seat.
Some partners come to us with a sector already in mind. Health, criminal justice, education, gender equity, recovery. Each one maps to a cohort we can run, a named institution, and a defined cost.
Tell us the room and we will tell you what it takes to fill it.
Sometimes the simple things are the hardest to do.
What follows is the whole picture. Take your time with it.
The world moves fast and attention is fragmented. Most days deliver more input than a nervous system was built to sort. Pumzika is built around the two things that bring that back into balance. Silence and nature.
A community where inner peace leads to shared peace; where people live with wholeness in mind, body, and spirit, and communities thrive with connection and compassion.
A few days without speaking, without a phone, without anything to prove, and the noise drops. What is left is your own voice. People find deep rest as they soften toward themselves. They find their own center, and connect with their own inner intelligence.
The places we work strip away distraction and reawaken the senses. No agenda, no notifications, nothing to prove. Time in the natural world causes a deep remembering of who we are. The signal to noise ratio comes back into balance.
Rest, mindfulness and community support are in danger by the very nature of life in 2026. Our founders have seen what structured practice does inside universities, schools and workplaces here, and built Pumzika to carry it further: more sessions, more places, more people.
A sabbatical at the foot of Kilimanjaro. A retreat in the quiet corners of America. A training in a Tanzanian university, a circle in a recovery house, a leadership programme inside a company. Different rooms, one practice, one philosophy. Everyone sits in the same silence.
Pumzika creates spaces where people can rest and restore their whole selves (body, emotions and mind) and access mindfulness tools that foster resilience and peace. By making retreats and training accessible beyond economic barriers, we help individuals and communities grow and thrive together.
We act with honesty and fairness, building trust and safety in all we do.
We create spaces of belonging where people feel connected, supported, and never alone.
We cultivate compassion and empathy that strengthen relationships and communities.
We inspire openness and resilience, so people can face challenges and seek support.
We live mindfulness in action, turning wellbeing into an everyday reality.
We nurture imagination and potential, helping people heal, grow, and shape a brighter future together.
Structured wellbeing support is thinly resourced almost everywhere. Tanzania, where we began, happens to have unusually clear numbers.
psychiatrists serving a population of more than 65 million people
mental health workers per 100,000 people, against a global average around ten times higher
Where services exist, they sit in urban referral hospitals and focus on diagnosis and medication.
Wellness tools, prevention and peer support sit outside the system almost entirely.
Stigma keeps the conversation private, so demand rarely shows up in official data.
The gap is structural, and it shows up wherever attention gets monetised and rest goes unpaid. Tanzania simply measures it more precisely than most places do.
Its community structures, intergenerational households and everyday practices of collective rest are ahead of a great deal that industrialised societies have already lost. The work here is building infrastructure around something that already exists.
Sources: WHO Mental Health Atlas. Health Policy Watch, 2024. Frontiers in Public Health, 2026. Penal Code Cap. 16 s.217.
Participants highly request more trainings, retreats, and community events to learn more about digital detox, mindfulness, forest bathing, and sound healing.
We are deeply inspired by the feedback we have received after recent trainings with University students in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and the Tanzania Psychological Association.
One curriculum, adapted in framing and examples for each audience, wherever it runs. Nurses, educators, students, counsellors, corporate teams and people in recovery all sit in the same practice.
A seven week programme run inside universities, workplaces and institutions. Weekly evening sessions covering mindfulness practice, emotional regulation, conscious communication and sustainable leadership. Each cohort closes with a graduation day at Kilemakyaro.
Friday to Sunday, residential, at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Silence, guided practice, fresh food, sharing circles and a full digital detox. Secular, and open to any level of experience. Twelve participants, every seat scholarship funded.
We partner with addiction recovery houses across four phases. A three day foundation intensive, eight weeks of follow up, monthly support visits through the year, and a garden established with the house that becomes the daily practice.
Cohorts running continuously across Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Dar es Salaam. Quiet Retreats on a seasonal calendar with every seat scholarship funded. Recovery house programmes in two partner houses.
A Pumzika home in Moshi: offices, training space, and the first Digital Detox Cafe in East Africa. A Swahili first wellness library recorded by Tanzanian teachers, in a language spoken by over 200 million people.
The Tanzania model becomes a template. A national network of trained facilitators, a nature based retreat home, and the same three tracks opening in university ecosystems and wellness communities wherever a partner is ready to build one.
Pumzika is a Tanzanian registered NGO based in Moshi, governed by a Tanzanian board. Every programme is delivered by Tanzanian facilitators. The team that built this from Moshi is the same team scaling it outward.
Ten years as a facilitator and meditation teacher. Has delivered team and motivation work with USAID HIV and AIDS programmes and with Vodacom Tanzania.
Co-facilitates cohorts and retreats and chairs the board, holding programme quality and safeguarding across every track.
Mindfulness teacher and programme architect. Trains the Tanzanian facilitation team, with the role reducing each year by design.
Abdulrahim Maulid, Boniface Kisanga, Peace Deusdedit Tinuga, Isaya Asulwisye Mwakanyelile.
Dr. Chris Mauki, University of Dar es Salaam.
Andrew Kaluza, Pumzika Retreats.
Registered in Tanzania under the NGO Act, Cap. 56. Annual audited financial statements from a Tanzania registered audit firm. Quarterly financial summaries and programme impact reports for every accelerator. Participant stories and photographs used only with consent.
A worldwide effort that began in the heart of Africa, and it is still just beginning.
Four updates a year. What ran, who sat, what they said, and what is next. Nothing else.
PUMZIKA NGO · MOSHI, TANZANIA
Pumzika means rest in Swahili. Retreats and sabbaticals: Pumzika Retreats.