The History

AfricAid’s origins date back to 1996, when its founder, Ashley Shuyler, journeyed to Tanzania, and saw first-hand the devastating impact of overwhelming poverty on the lives of young Africans and the enormous educational needs that existed there. Learning that only about 5% of girls in Tanzania are able to complete a secondary school education (equivalent to US high school), she quickly realized how privileged American children are to receive an education, and became determined to find a way to help provide young African girls with their own educational opportunities.

Initially, she and her family began collecting school supplies and money to donate to schools in Tanzania, and then began developing relationships with other organizations and individuals who helped them establish connections with needy schools and students in Tanzania. Soon, AfricAid was officially born.

AfricAid gained its nonprofit status in 2001, and initially focused its efforts on providing scholarships and school supplies for Tanzania’s Maasai Girls’ School. A secondary school principally for girls of the Maasai tribe, the Maasai Girls’ School was the first school of its kind in Tanzania, and remains AfricAid’s largest beneficiary. But, as AfricAid began to receive increasing support and publicity for its work, it was also able to expand its reach. By the end of its second year of existence, new schools had been added to AfricAid’s support efforts, and AfricAid had participated in a unique fundraising climb of Africa’s highest peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Not content to simply raise funds for its educational mission, however, a group of AfricAid volunteers joined forces with another team of supporters in 2004 to help finish the construction of classrooms that AfricAid had helped fund at two new locations, Usa River and Losinoni. Since that “ground-breaking” effort, AfricAid has gone on to provide funding for computers for a computer lab at a new vocational school in Usa River, and continues to support the commitment to education shown by that community. And AfricAid has also since established a unique micro-credit business at Losinoni, in which the women of this remote Maasai village create jewelry that AfricAid then sells in the US to help fund a school lunch program for the children there.

Most recently, AfricAid has helped fund the creation of and classrooms for a girls’ secondary school, Ebenezer Girls’ School, outside Arusha, in Tanzania, and has provided funding for vocational schooling projects and sponsored the pioneering Teaching in Action teacher training initiative designed to bring more participatory learning methods to the classroom. AfricAid has helped to supply solar power to the village of Losinoni in order to assist that village’s efforts to attract teachers to its burgeoning primary school. In addition, AfricAid has provided support for the funding of a primary school water pipe project in Tanzania, school supplies for a school in Ethiopia and funding for two community school projects in Zambia. The Kisa Project is AfricAid’s newest initiative, a program that provides school scholarships and leadership training to some of Africa’s brightest young women.

AfricAid has raised over $800,000 for education in Africa since 2001. These funds have been used to provide scholarships, textbooks, classroom construction and school supplies to schools throughout Tanzania, and to support the local initiatives of Tanzanians committed to education. AfricAid currently supports eight schools in northern Tanzania, and has funded hundreds of scholarships for girls’ secondary education there, along with other educational initiatives and projects in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Zambia. In addition, AfricAid actively promotes the development of a greater culture of service learning and service activities among American youth through AfricAid Clubs formed throughout the US, the AfricAid Kids Team (AKT) and its “Changemakers” Service Learning Curriculum.

Ashley’s Story

In 2001, five years after my first trip to Tanzania, the dream and vision I had been formulating for the creation of what is now AfricAid finally became a reality. My work with AfricAid since then in helping to provide educational opportunities for young African girls has been an undertaking that has both defined and enriched my life, and I feel thankful whenever I have the opportunity to share with others why it is that I have become so committed to the work that AfricAid is doing. But in these exchanges with others, I’m often asked why it is that I choose to support a cause half-way around the world when there are so many needs in our own country, and even in our own communities. It is, indeed, a difficult question, but my answers always come back to the incredible stories of those I have met in Tanzania, the extraordinary lengths these people go to in order to overcome extraordinary challenges, and the resiliency and hopefulness with which they do so.

It was during my first trip to Tanzania that I witnessed poverty unlike anything I had ever seen before, and caught a small glimpse of the challenges most Tanzanians face each day. But I also left with the sense that those I had met there were some of the most generous, determined, and hard-working people I have ever known, and I soon realized that I would never be able to forget them. And it was at this time that I also began to understand that the educational opportunities which we so often take for granted here in the U.S. could help make an enormous difference in the lives of the Tanzanians I had met while there. As I have traveled back on several occasions to this country I have now grown to know and love, these initial impressions have only been reaffirmed; whether helping build classrooms, teaching at schools in Tanzania, learning their native Swahili language, or spending time with them in their villages, I have seen first-hand the power that an education has to transform lives — especially the lives of young girls — in this East African nation, and I have become even more committed to increasing educational opportunities there.

We at AfricAid cannot single-handedly eliminate poverty on the African continent, but we are making a big difference in the lives of many individuals in Tanzania; it is our hope that, with an education — and therefore a voice in their future — these young women can step forward and make the changes that they see fit for their own lives and for their own nation. I hope that you will join us in our efforts.

Ashley Shuyler
Founder and Board Member

Please visit our Media Center page to view additional messages from Ashley Shuyler and other AfricAid-related media.