The Story of Arise
“From Dream to Reality”
On the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, in a little village called Wiri, a young boy named Frank came home from school for the holidays.
Whilst grazing his family’s cows, he found the other children from his village shunned him because he went to a private school. As Frank grew up, he cherished an idea that one day there could be a school in his village where every little boy and girl could go whether they came from the richest family or the poorest.
Ultimately, he dreamed of giving all children an equally good education so that the whole village could be lifted out of poverty together.
Twenty years later, as is traditional in Tanzania, Frank’s Father, Vangaeli, a subsistence farmer, offered his son an acre of his farmland on which to build a house for himself and his new wife, Salome.
What was not traditional was Frank’s decision. Instead of building a house for his family, he wanted to give the land to the community for a school for its children.
However, although they had land, the circumstances of Frank and his family were such that it was unlikely they would ever be able to raise enough money to bring this about
In a stroke of good fortune, it was then that Frank met Sue and Ron Hayes during their time in Tanzania as volunteers.
They realised that they shared a vision of quality education for all children whatever their circumstances.
Once the seed of thought was planted in Sue and Ron’s minds, it was only a matter of time before they agreed to try and help make Frank’s dream a reality.
Sue and Ron decided to raise the money to build just one classroom on that first acre of land. Donations continued to come and further classrooms were built.
As the school grew, so did the need for land. Vangaeli, who had witnessed the success of the school thus far, gifted a further five acres to the school. The rest, as they say, is history. Frank’s dream became a reality.