Introduction

The Kamitei Foundation (“Kamitei”) is a non-religious charity that aims to make an effective contribution to the education of children in rural Tanzania through small scale investments in facilities and teaching aids and through the granting of individual scholarships. We currently support 8 primary schools and 2 secondary schools in 4 rural communities in Northern Tanzania (Kilimatembo, Kainam, Irkeepus and Oltukai), reaching 3,500 children. Our Scholarship program has assisted dozens of students so far.

Our focus on education is based on the following beliefs:

  • In the longer term, education has a strong positive impact on the standard of living of individuals and their communities
  • Education has important indirect benefits in areas such as health, birth control and empowerment of communities
  • The benefits of education tend to be structural and long lasting: it creates a virtuous circle

Our field activities are based on multiple years of on-the-ground experience in rural Tanzania as to how education can be structurally improved in the most effective and efficient manner, whilst keeping overhead costs to a minimum. We use multiple approaches to reach our aim; we build school facilities, we supply desks, books and teaching aids, we provide housing, training and incentives to the teachers, etc. We don’t offer a ‘free ride’, however: the communities have to contribute themselves as well. This matching principle ensures that the communities are really committed to make things work.

Approach

We take a no-nonsense, fairly business-minded approach to charity: the communities and individuals we support are considered ‘business’ partners and co-investors and we treat them as such. We aim to develop result oriented programs for investing in education, ensuring that a community is willing and able in the longer term to continue to invest their own resources in the education of their children.

Objectives

  • to provide our development aid in the most effective and efficient manner possible
  • to achieve empowerment of the local people we work with and avoid aid dependency
  • to work within and respect the existing government and community structures
  • to achieve tangible results that can be measured and evaluated

History

Kamitei Foundation, established in 2002, is named after the late Mrs Maria Motika, whose Maasai nick-name was ‘Kamitei’. Mrs Maria Motika – born in Tanzania, Maasai by origin – had not received modern education herself, but worked hard and succeeded to provide good education to all of her eight children as well as a number of children of relatives. Nowadays, all these children live a relatively prosperous life and two of them managed to obtain a university degree. They both are currently part of the staff of Kamitei in Tanzania, contributing to the creation of similar education opportunities for other children in East Africa.

The Kamitei Foundation is registered in Tanzania and the Netherlands. It is set up as a lean, professional organisation, governed by independent Boards. The Boards currently each consist of three members, with certain Board members sitting on one or more Boards for control and efficiency reasons. The Board members do not receive any compensation. Kamitei’s staff consists of volunteers who are located both in Tanzania and the Netherlands.

The Kamitei Foundation is registered as a non-profit organization in Arusha, Tanzania.

The Kamitei Foundation is also registered with the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce in The Netherlands under the name “Stichting Kamitei”. Stichting Kamitei is an officially recognised Dutch charity organisation (“ANBI”) and enjoys all tax benefits for charity organisations and its donors as offered under Dutch and under Belgian law.