Tell HN: I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years
Ten years ago I was 19 and traveling through East Africa, and I spent a summer in Ibumila, a village in the Njombe highlands of Tanzania. There's no school in the village. The nearest one is a boarding school an hour away that costs a few hundred dollars a year, which is out of reach for most families there and was about two weeks of summer job money for me. The daughter of the family I stayed with, Anwarite, was 11. I offered to pay her fees and told myself I'd keep paying as long as she wanted to keep going. This summer she graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam with a degree in Language Studies, and last week she told me she'd been accepted into a Master of Arts in Swahili program there. Roughly 2% of people from Njombe ever finish a university degree. Her goal is to get a PhD and then to bring it back to the region. Her entire 18-month master's program (tuition, registration, fees, books, supplies) comes to 3,060,000 TSh, about $1,161. Since this worked out, I kept adding students as I could afford to, and in 2021 I registered it as a 501(c)(3), the Tanzania Education Project. It supports five students from Ibumila now, school fees and healthcare. I kept it small while I was finishing my PhD because I didn't want commitments I couldn't personally guarantee for a decade; I've since started a postdoc, so it feels like the right time to grow past my own paycheck. The long-term goal is that every kid in the village has access to education and healthcare. I sometimes think of this project as a slow experiment. How much could the village itself change over someone's lifetime if the kids have access to education? https://tanzaniaeducationproject.org/ is the website. Nobody takes a salary, and aside from bank fees the money goes to the students. If anyone wants to fund Anwarite's master's specifically, it's here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-anwarite-to-her-masters-prog... Happy to answer any questions or take any tips you all might have about doing this sort of thing.
Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
codetiger
Good work!!! I love what you are doing.
megaloblasto
This is great. Thanks for sharing. I'm always happy to make a donation for education. Weird HN type question. On your site you mention paying $5 for hosting the site but didn't mention that here. We're you able to figure out a free way to host?
assimpleaspossi
She said that when she earns her PhD she wants to bring it back to the region but what would a degree in Language Studies bring to a region with so little?
aftbit
I love this hyper-individualized approach. I would be way more willing to meet someone and sponsor _them_ than I would be to just give anonymous dollars.
prometheus1992
This is amazing. I once adopted a kid's education who lived in Colombia. The organization would send me a letter with his picture every 3 months or so, giving me some updates of how the kid is doing in school etc. After about a year I asked the organization if i could say Hi to the kid on a video call (i think i was watching some show on netflix or prime, where the main plot was how seemingly non profits scamming donors or something like that). I kinda grew suspicious that how do i even know if these kids are real and if this money is actually going somewhere. The org said they can't do it, they can't arrange for the kid to say Hi to me on the video call. I decided to cancel the payment from that month's onward. I redirected that money to doctors without borders. I don't know if i did the right or not; the point is that trust is extremely important when it comes to non profit efforts and the donors need to be able to get some sense (even a teeny,tiny action) that this effort is real. Again, thank you for what you did. you sound like an amazing person.
mykowebhn
This is really great. Thanks for doing this! Just donated $100US
lukehandcool
Thank you all for the responses. I wasn't exactly sure how this would go over here. Someone pointed out that I have a typo in my email on the site (thank you!). I'll fix that when I get home from work tonight. The correct email is tanzaniaeducationproject@gmail.com (not .org) if you want to reach out
azath92
I will echo what others have said and say this is amazing on a personal level, but also super cool to share with others. I think especially in tech we can get a little focused on efficacy and scale instead of human impact, and some might quibble about that in the comments ill be interested to see the discourse. Your impact is undeniable, and i think quite importantly very tangible and concrete to you. Very inspiring.
criddell
What an inspiring story! How did you end up in Ibumila? Do you ever go back there? You ask how much can a village change. Are you trying to document that in any way?
dyauspitr
10 years ago, I paid a lump sum to have three roughly 5 year-old Indian girls go all the way to college and I used to get yearly updates and pictures but then I moved a couple of times. I wonder how they’re doing now. I did my due diligence at the time with the charity and saw that their overhead was less than 12% and 88% of whatever was donated went to the kids.
web-cowboy
I highly recommend donating some amount of your time, expertise, or money to good causes, regardless of your financial situation. Even the smallest amounts compound to amazing results—especially over long stretches over time. When I was a student I made (very!) modest contributions to clean water projects, microfinance organizations, and the reports I now read as a mature adult are so gratifying. I also try to keep a "charity" type project in my queue - volunteering my tech skills to help fix/build things for NGOs so fun to look back on.
magicalhippo
Some friends were involved with an aid organization which helped several rural areas across a few different countries in Africa. A key point was the organization didn't finance things. Instead they financed seminars, workshops and such. They'd pay for travel, food and accommodations, as well as renting a place and one or more speakers. They'd facilitating people learning basic accounting skills which they could use in the co-op back home to make it harder for another co-op member to embezzle money, for example. A lot of aid per buck this way. Seems like you're well on your way with something similar. Well done!
talon8635
Well done. Relevant to the topic: https://www.cato.org/books/beautiful-tree
Simulacra
This is beautiful. Bravo. You created an opportunity for someone to thrive and grow. There are few higher callings to humanity than that, IMHO. I also did something sort of similar: I had a close friend in Brazil (former roommate when he eas in the US; self deported) who was going through a very difficult time. As an experiment..I gave him $100/month, no strings attached. Blow it on food and games, rent, whatever he wants. Tl;dr it went very well, his life significantly improved, I did it because he was my friend, I had the money, and wanted to see what would happen. We Skyped after his shift ended one night and he was very depressed. With a VPN and a credit card I ordered him Dominos to cheer him up. I sent a feast that.. only cost me $10.[1] Realizing the exchange rate benefit, I got the idea of giving him $100 each month as an experiment; $500 Brazilian Reals. I wanted to know if the extra money would help and if I could use the exchange rate to help my friend get to a better place in life. Sort of a UBI but not quite. Now, $100 to me is a bit of money, but 500 BR to him was a crazy amount of money to be given. Over six months, it allowed him to quit his job at McDonald's, get out of a financially unstable roommate situation, move closer to his family in his own place, and find a better job. He started dating again. I told him I would commit to a year, but he actually said at the 6.5 month mark that he's doing so well that I don't have to keep giving him money. Three years later he's still doing great. I have concluded from this that more money in our pocket always helps, but there is a certain responsibility (maybe in general) needed when a gift like that lands in our laps. It can be easy to blow it [2] but just as easy to use it to move life forward. It has certainly made me more ..aware/appreciative of my privilege and (sometimes fragile) security. [1]. Two medium four topping pizzas, two 2-litre bottles of soda, breadsticks, and chicken nuggets. [2]. I was once given a generous stipend from the Student Government of $140 which I did not use for school supplies, rent, or even groceries. Nope. I bought alcohol.
edumucelli
Wow, that is amazing, congratulations on making such difference on peoples lives. Btw, you can use Netlify to host your website for free and still be able to add a PayPal client button. That would save you 5$ per month that could be directed to the cause you are helping for all those years.
HeyLaughingBoy
Highlight the fact that it's a 501(c)(3) on the website. Being a non-profit opens up opportunities for donations from large corporations and applying for government grants. I notice that you have a PayPal Donate button. IIRC, PayPal has a specific payment structure for nonprofits.
thevillagechief
This is great man. I've been on the other end of this. My annual high school fees cost $700. Couldn't afford it, and it was extremely stressful. If not for the benevolence of my high school principal, I have dropped out. It completely changed my life. You're making a massive difference.
petesergeant
This is awesome. I would note that there are similar charities (based in various Western countries) that do similar things if people like the idea but for whatever reason don't want to donate to this particular one, just a simple Google search away.
Ozzie_osman
This is amazing. I'm curious how you provide oversight. I imagine with Amwirite there was a lot of trust, but how can you be ensure the money is actually being used properly as you add more students? I'd imagine that in many parts of the world where money is tight, you might encounter families who just use the money for other things or all sorts of schemes. I'd also love to learn more about the 501c3 process and how easy/hard it is.
avazhi
And this is on Hacker News... why?