Village Schools began with a seemingly impossible dream in 2004 when Godfrey Hiari and Emmanueli Masumbuko left their home villages in western Tanzania and travelled some 400 miles to the village of Igoda. They worked with people from five villages and in 70 days those people built Madisi Secondary School, launching a movement that has inspired tens of thousands of people in villages all across Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Kenya to work together to build secondary schools for their kids as well.
A decade later -- after building and opening more than 30 schools, starting one of the largest HIV/AIDS clinics in central Tanzania, and helping more than ten thousand young people get an education -- the leadership in Tanzania embarked upon the project of founding a leadership college. The first students graduated from that college in 2019, and more than a dozen of them have been working together to propel forward the work in Tanzania at an accelerated pace. They have also been traveling to Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Kenya to work with leaders in those countries to mobilize people to build and open secondary schools in more than a dozen villages.