The Story of our School

David Gido, is a young teacher who decided 2 years ago to open a preschool for very low income kids, many of whom are orphans or live with single moms.  He started a one room school but soon, many families began to see his school as the only viable education solution for their kids.  Students as young as 3 began to walk great distances to attend David's school and he was forced to look for a second location for his school. So, David hired a couple of his teacher friends paying them from his own salary.  He soon was forced to rent a larger space to create the second location and Making a Difference Foundation Tanzania (MDFT) Primary School was born.

MDFT is located in Arusha, Tanzania.  In Tanzania, most parents are expected to pay school fees, school uniforms and school supply.  This often makes it impossible with an average income of $500 per year.  We have 2 locations, about 100 students and 5 teachers.  Our students range between the ages of 2 and 7 years old and we want to bring the love of gardening and growing their own great foods to kids even that young.

Making a Difference Foundation Tanzania Primary School Building (we have 3 classrooms here).  This is the location of our first Flood Garden.

Not only do we want to teach preschool-third grade but we would like to have our student stay finish their undergraduate careers in our school.  The only way that we will know if our Flood Garden learning model is effective in providing a better education for our students, they really need to stay with us.

THE PROBLEM: The laws of the land do not allow us to teach children older than 7 years on rented property so we are working hard to be able to buy a property were we can expand our school.  

OUR NEED: Our dream is to buy one or two acres with enough space to build a larger Flood Garden for the children ages 8 to 18+!!!