Lalahe was born in the Ngorongoro Crater. He is Maasai. We help him build schools.
He has hardly received any education himself and knows exactly that nothing works without it. He is committed. We help him with it. That is our mission.
Specifically, this means: We finance. Lalahe and Lazaro build with the communities. The Tanzanian government takes over completed schools. Thus, a community idea becomes a government school that sustains itself in the long run. Without us.
What sets us apart from others: We often say no. Only when five conditions are met do we start. Need alone is not enough for us.
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How we check before we build.
Five criteria. Lalahe and Lazaro check on site. The board decides. Only when all five are met, do we start.
Need
Children must make do without a school or travel extreme distances. Remote places also count: Education reaches everyone, no matter how far away.
Commitment of the community
Will the people there carry the project? Physically, organisationally, for the long run? Without that willingness there is no build.
Motivation of the community
Does the community even want it? Not “we think they need this”, but “they want this”. Not help that is merely well meant, but help that arrives where it is needed.
Strong chairmen and trusted persons
Are there local leaders Lalahe and Lazaro trust? Building a school means working together for years, and that only works on trust.
Property with building permit
A property on which the Tanzanian government permits the construction of the school. A prerequisite for the subsequent transfer as an official government school.
What drives us.
These people and their places are the reason why we build.
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A school grows with its children.
A finished government school has three blocks (A, B, C), teachers’ houses and toilets. We never build all of it in one go.
We always start with block A: two classrooms and a staff room. Teachers arrive one by one, children come as the school grows. When the first classes get older, we build the next block.
In Selela and Makuyuni Juu the community even carried on building by itself after we had handed over block A. Those are the finest results of our work.
First water, then education.
A well is not part of every school project. We build one if the community has no clean drinking water. In Orkisima, it came in 2020, two years before the handover of the school, and still supplies 3,200 people according to WHO criteria. The second is currently being built at Lolera Primary School.
Toilets and water are also mandatory for a school to be officially recognized. Orkisima shows what happens when both come together: Water and education achieve more together than any project on its own.
Questions about the mission? Write to us directly.
If you want to learn more about our criteria or why we never build a complete school directly: Jan will tell you firsthand.
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Jan
Jan Grandisch. Co-founder, involved since 2018. First point of contact for donations and projects. He met Lalahe in Tanzania in 2017.