OWOS was founded in Dar es Salaam in 2014, to a Spanish mother Foundation, Un Mundo Una Sonrisa, with the goal of providing dental health care to rural and under-resourced communities across Tanzania. Dental health care and awareness of oral hygiene is often lacking in these areas. OWOS aims to provide critical dental services to and promote oral hygiene education particularly among children living in these communities. Oral health care is especially important in a country such as Tanzania where HIV/AIDS and diabetes are prevalent. Poor oral health is a major risk factor with these two diseases because a depleted immune system compromises an individual’s ability to combat oral infection and escalates the severity of any oral health issues. Thus, dental health services and education are highly important in communities across the country. Since its establishment OWOS has actively worked in Dar es Salaam and surrounding areas to provide dental services and increase oral health awareness.
Vision Statement
Because no one should die of a tooth ache
Mission Statement
Providing dental healthcare to children and underserved communities in Tanzania.
- Organising outreach camps in the most remote areas of the country to treat people where it is the most needed and medical access is non existent.
- Increasing awareness of oral hygiene and advocacy engagement.
- Training of Tanzanian dental professionals including dentists, and dental assistants.
- Our long term goal which has been added in 2017, includes building and equipping in specific remote areas dental care units and collaborating with other International NGO’s to permanently have foreign volunteers offer oral care in them. Because these units will require accessory services such as cleaning, cooking, and regular maintenance, communities can be built progressively around these units, including One World One Smile schools. This last and most important step, will allow this project to leave a legacy and get rid of the frustration of going to places, treat people and walk away. These DCU will also become training platforms for Tanzanian Dentists updating them to a more actual know-how, and the schools will give birth, among other things to potential dental nurses, assistant dentists or even Dentists through international Scholarships. To connect Dentists and NGO’s worldwide but more specifically to achieve our goal, Owos has given birth to a new movement, DentalSwat, created to promote humanitarian actions thus helping the required volunteers to reach the objectives.
Action Plan