Teresa Dangwa (or Pastor Tee, as she is affectionately known) is a woman on a mission determined to use her life experiences and opportunities God has given her to change lives. She has gone through her share of trials and tribulation some of them private but a significant of them public. She was denied access to education at a very young age, disowned by her father as a teenager causing her to drop out of high school which impacted her high school graduation and given to marriage to a practical stranger for all intense and purposes. Managed to escape that situation with her womanhood intact and runs to the church for solace only to be molested and raped by men in church leadership positions. Teresa was introduced to masturbation and sex after giving her life to Christ by church leadership. She had given her life to Christ in 1984 while in high school. She had a child out of wedlock and was ostracized by fellow church-folk and leadership. Being estranged from her family left her vulnerable but her vulnerability was often hidden in that “vibrant smile” everyone notices and was often mistaken for strength by some and for confidence by others but for her, underneath that smile was deep pain and pure survival mode.

In 1997, after having been unceremoniously deported from the United Kingdom the prior year, due to a series of events orchestrated by Omnipotent God, Teresa was offered a job in the US while in Zimbabwe. Arriving at BWI that September 12th brought with it raised hopes for a new lease of life and a better future only to find out later that the American dream she had been promised was a nightmare. She was caught up in a cleverly hidden modern-day human trafficking type of arrangement by the very people who purported to fight for civil rights for the Black community in the USA. It is in this situation where she was introduced to two realities: 1. Hunger in the land of plenty and 2. God was all she had and had to strengthen her belief system or she would not survive. It is the realization of these things that made her resolve to “running away from her captivity”. Life was hard as an illegal immigrant and learning to navigate the system by herself after learning of the lies her bosses had told her concerning their “communications” with immigration to “regulate my status”. Eventually, with the grace of God, she stabilized her immigration status, her son joined her after being separated from each other for 7 years.

In 2007 Teresa was feeling like a) there was more to life than what she was doing at the time and b) why, all her life, she always gravitates to the hurting, why was she built this way?  These feelings that she could not push aside led her to ask God, "Why did you create me?  What purpose did you want me to fulfill when you put me in my Mother's womb?  What exactly is my purpose and what am I doing in this God-forsaken country away from my son and family?"  Well, God took her on a year-long journey which included being taken down memory lane of almost all the painful experiences that she encountered from when she was 5 years old.  I was during this season that Dangwa Initiative was born.  She writes in detail how this transpired in her book, Broken for the Master's Use: The 828 Woman.  It is these many experiences that God wanted me to use to help girls and women who are experiencing similar situations of what God has helped me overcome. 

Teresa is a proud single mother to Nyasha and “Gogo” aka grandmother to her 7-year-old grandson, Prince Errol. She also “adopted” Yaw, a son from Ghana and supports many orphans and vulnerable children, most of which are AIDS orphan girls in Zimbabwe.