In August 2006, Todd Grossman took the journey of a lifetime and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. On Todd’s last day in Arusha he visited the Olturoto village where most of his guides and porters lived. What he witnessed compelled him to get involved.
Everyone Todd came into contact with was exceptionally warm, prideful and happy. They expressed to Todd on a repeated basis, the need for education in their communities and the importance of it for their children’s and country’s future. The parents openly discussed the existence of significant hurdles making it difficult for their children to become educated, due to lack of school facilities, educational resources, and financial means.
Todd visited the Olturoto primary school and learned that the entire school was in danger of closing due to unsanitary bathroom conditions given that it had four run down outhouses for 969 students. At this moment, the idea of Kilimanjaro Education Foundation (KEF) was born and Todd said he would be back to help.
Upon Todd’s return to New York, he quickly established KEF as a 501(c)(3) charity with the purpose to help enrich the lives of African children. A year later Todd returned to Olturoto with a team of charity climbers who raised more than $30,000 which led to the construction of new bathrooms and ensuring that the school could remain open and functional.
We are grassroots to the core and motivated by getting stuff done as fast as we can in the right way with the right people!
The Arusha City Council has formally recognized the work of KEF and we will continue to work hand in hand with the Council as we continue to identify projects in the Arusha area.
We have recently engaged with other city councils in other districts to spread the impact as broadly as we can.
We want to help as many schools as possible.
KEF has an exceptional team on the ground in Tanzania to help us achieve our mission. We are constantly visiting new public schools and scoping out the most urgent projects. There is a huge problem at the moment of public secondary schools not having enough classrooms to accept all the new entrants from primary schools and we want to help alleviate this issue in particular as well as the ongoing need for water and adequate sanitation solutions at these schools, amongst other things.
We are always open to suggestions of schools to visit in the Moshi/Arusha/Meru/Karatu/Tanga areas of Tanzania.