A little bit about where I'll be going: Angel House Orphanage and Secondary School

Angel House is located in Tarime, Tanzania about 30 minutes from the Kenyan border and an hour from Lake Victoria. Tanzania is a popular tourist destination to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and go on world-class safaris and coastal vacations. Tourists are often surprised by stark poverty, orphan crisis, and poor quality education. 


Angel House Orphanage opened in 2005 to care for orphaned children in their community. Most of the time, children in our region are orphaned due to AIDS, malaria, and other diseases which may be curable, but clinics are far and medicine is expensive. Today Angel House has about 60 children from neighboring communities. 

In addition to the orphan crisis, Tanzania faces challenges in their education system. A little over 50 years ago, at the time of independence, the first president of Tanzania declared that the national language would be Kiswahili, in an effort to unify the 100+ tribes within Tanzania. It was an effort to promote peace and allow everyone to communicate in the same language. The Ministry of Education began to translate all primary-level textbooks to Swahili to help the children learn the new national language in school. To this day, children begin school with Kiswahlii up until secondary school. The task of translating secondary curriculum proved to be too great, so secondary school students are taught and tested in English. Most students go through a major and difficult stage of language acquisition when they enter secondary school, and because of this challenge, last year almost 2/3 of the country failed their national exam, which has everything to do with deciding what a student’s opportunities for further education are after school. To address this national issue within Angel House, the primary school children are enrolled in an English-speaking primary school so when they reach secondary school, they are able to focus on learning content rather than learning a new language. Angel House opened a secondary school in 2011 to fight the poor quality of secondary school education in the community. There are now about 250 students at Angel House Secondary School.