Orkeeswa Secondary School, in a rural-remote Maasai area of Tanzania, opened with around 40 students in April 2009. I was Orkeeswa’s only non-teaching volunteer in the first year. Orkeeswa today has around 400 students at an increasingly beautiful and well-resourced campus.

In September 2024, I returned to Tanzania to witness Orkeeswa’s growth and impact.

Here’s what stood out:

• Locally staffed – no more western volunteers.
• Teacher and support staff qualifications are world class with evident passion for their posting.
• Alumni returning to their community with relevant qualifications and experience.
• Permaculture and paving replacing mud and dust.
• School garden now producing enough fruit & veg to feed the whole school in the wet season.
• Integrated life skills – small groups of students were deep in discussion daily in gardens, pavillions and classrooms.
• Orkeeswa Outreach – student and alumni volunteers teach life skills, academic and sporting curriculum in 9 local government primary schools supported by paid counsellors.
• Orkeeswa Incubator – supporting students to achieve their post-secondary goals. I met with student Bariki, whose Maasai family traditionally keep bees. Bariki makes his own hives, uses a pushbike to transport them 20km, and was selling raw honey on a small scale in cut-off salvaged water bottles. Orkeeswa helped Bariki with surgery to correct impaired mobility, and the Incubator program is supporting him to develop viable boutique honey production.
• WAEV (Women’s Agri-Enviro Vision) founded by Saing’orie Sangau from Orkeeswa’s first year in 2009. Along with women’s economic empowerment and literacy, WAEV is proving women, villages and schools can establish trees (nearly 150,000 planted) and food crops for shade, regeneration of severe erosion, improved soil nutrition and food security.
• Deputy Head of School, Hosea, was also from the first class in 2009.