About the Founder
In 2013 I travelled to a small village in Tanzania. I was 19 at the time, wandering the world in my summer break from university. A friend of a friend had heard that I was in Tanzania and asked me to check up on an orphanage they were funding in a small village outside of Njombe, Tanzania. So I took a taxi in Dar es Salaam to the bus station and a 13 hour bus ride across the Serengeti passing through cities and villages and parks full of elephants, zebras, and giraffes. Then another taxi took me closer to the village, and finally a motorbike brought me all the way to Ibumila.
I stayed in Ibumila for a few months, getting to know the families that lived there and seeing how they lived. One family in particular, Liberata and her daughter Anwarite, were especially kind to me. They cooked me meals and offered me a bed to sleep in. After a few months of getting to know the family, Anwarite fell ill with a stomach issue. The hospital was about 2 hours away and making the trip was a financial burden on most families in Ibumila. So I did what any reasonable traveler would do, and paid for Anwarite to get to the hospital and get the care she needed. After two hours on motorcycles and buses, we made it to the clinic where Anwarite got the diagnosis and medicine she needed. The trip with motorcycle taxis, buses, food and hospital visit cost me a grand total of $35.
Shortly after that I came to realize that Anwarite had not started the semester at the local boarding school because her mother couldn't afford it. The cost for the boarding school, room, board, and supplies was about $400 for the semester, a reasonable sum for a college student from the US, so I helped out again.
It was at that moment, seeing how hard Liberata was working for her daughter, and seeing the untapped potential of Anwarite that I decided to support her health care and education through University. The likelihood that a girl from a remote village in Tanzania will graduate University is almost zero, but I had a feeling Anwarite was up to the task.
13 years later, in July of 2026, Anwarite passed all her final exams in University and graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam. She's now returning to the village, bringing everything she gained along the way back to the place she grew up.
The wild success of Anwarite made me expand the charity to what it is today. In 2021 I created the Tanzania Education Project, a nonprofit 501(c)3 licensed in Boise, Idaho. As more donations come in, we continue to add students from the village to 100% fund their healthcare and education through university. For each annual donation of $1,200 we are able to add another student.
No one associated with Tanzania Education Project takes any money, and nothing is spent on advertising. 100% of donations go directly to the students.
None of this would be possible without the support of people like you, and the help and encouragement we have gotten from the people of Ibumila. Special thanks goes to Sister Theo, Anwarite's aunt who has helped organize things on the Tanzanian side. Anwarite and the other students continue to be an inspiration to us all.
Thank you for your support.
