Since 2008 we have funded the education of students from remote villages all over Tanzania, from primary school through medical school, while working with local doctors and nurses to improve emergency medical services.
Scholarships Elimu · education
Primary school in Tanzania has no tuition, but uniforms, shoes and supplies keep the poorest children home. Secondary school usually means leaving the village to board in town. We cover what stands in the way at every step, and we keep supporting students who want to go further.
2026Students on scholarship this school year
A school year Mwaka wa shule
At the start of each school year our Tanzanian directors travel out to Kingiti village and Kibakwe with the year's supplies: uniforms, shoes and socks, exercise books, pens, health insurance cards, and payments for meals and dormitory beds. Students are chosen locally, with priority for orphans and children from the poorest farming families.
Kingiti is a farming village of red-clay homes, a long drive off the paved road in Mpwapwa District, Dodoma Region. Most families grow maize, sorghum, peanuts and sunflower. For many of them, a year of boarding school would cost about half of what the household earns.
Students who finish secondary school can keep climbing. Our scholars have gone on to teachers colleges, nursing schools, universities and medical school.
Outside Kingiti village, Mpwapwa District. The nearest hospital is hours away by road.
Emergency medicine Idara ya Dharura
Emergency medicine is a young specialty in Tanzania. Many district and regional hospitals have had no emergency department and few doctors with formal training in resuscitation. Since 2017 our volunteer emergency medicine physicians have worked alongside Tanzanian doctors and nurses to change that, teaching skills that work with the equipment and staff a hospital actually has.
Our work began at Mpwapwa District Hospital, near Kingiti village. In partnership with the district government, we found that most of the hospital's gaps came down to training, equipment, or both, so we worked on the two together. We trained local physicians and ancillary staff in the fundamentals of emergency medicine, starting with structured triage and the same systematic, rapid assessment and intervention that emergency medicine physicians use with every critical patient. Because so many patients arrived with major trauma, sepsis or obstetric emergencies, we set out to build a resuscitation room with basic equipment. We also worked to expand the use of bedside ultrasound in medical, traumatic, and obstetric emergencies, and to improve obstetric surgery practices, with more reliable indications for, and safer execution of, cesarean sections.
Our teaching and clinical training initiatives utilize African Federation of Emergency Medicine materials, especially its Handbook of Acute and Emergency Care, and other local Tanzanian medical resources. The aim is for Tanzanians to lead and teach this work themselves.
Today our focus is Bugando Medical Centre in Mwanza, a much larger hospital that receives patients from regional and district hospitals across Tanzania's Lakes Zone.
Mpwapwa. First assessment and training at the only hospital serving a district of about 300,000 people.
A first emergency room. The hospital's first manual defibrillator, a Critical Care & Trauma team of 6 doctors and 4 nurses, and the district's first ER.
Into the Mara Region. Training at Musoma's hospitals, which serve 2.3 million people, and a partnership with EMAT.
COVID-19. More than 500 masks and respirators from New York ER doctors shipped to colleagues in Tanzania.
Bugando Medical Centre. Remote lectures and visiting senior residents from Kings County and SUNY Downstate in one of East Africa's busiest emergency departments.
A new residency. The first class of Bugando's emergency medicine residency program is planned for the fall.
Coming in 2027 Mwanza, Tanzania
Bugando Medical Centre is the referral hospital for northwestern Tanzania. With its affiliated Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences (CUHAS), we are preparing to submit the curriculum and accreditation documents for a new emergency medicine residency, offered as a Master of Medicine in Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Ally Akrabi, director of Bugando's Emergency Department, and Dr. Ben Belknap wrote the curriculum with the help of many colleagues in Tanzania and the US, and are leading the program's launch.
How we work Haba na haba
We plan every scholarship line by line in Tanzanian shillings and buy what students need in Tanzania. That keeps our costs low, puts money into local markets and schools, and lets a modest budget support 86 students.
Paid staff in the USOur board and the physicians who teach for us are volunteers.
Of our Tanzanian budget goes straight to studentsOffice costs, meetings and travel to the bank make up about 5% of the 2026 budget.
Supplies bought in TanzaniaUniforms, shoes, books and food are bought from local tailors, shops and markets, and our directors deliver them in person.
A full year of secondary schoolTuition, dormitory, meals, uniform and supplies, on average. A year of college or university averages about $1,000.
From our 2026 budget, in Tanzanian shillings (TSh)
| Item | TSh |
|---|---|
| Uniform: shorts or skirt and shirt kaptula / sketi / shati | 38,000 |
| Shoes and socks viatu na soksi | 35,000 |
| Health insurance bima | 10,000 |
| 7 exercise books daftari | 7,000 |
| 15 pens kalamu | 3,000 |
| Total, about US $37 | 93,000 |
Our people Kwa pamoja · together
NGO Director
Benitho grew up in Kingiti and joined our scholarship program for secondary school. In 2014 he became the first of our students to pass the Form 5 entrance exam and go on to college, earning a teaching diploma and continuing his studies in Dar es Salaam. Today he directs the NGO that once paid his school fees.
“May you continue in your generosity to our youth who are unable to gain an education as I once was.”
Primary and Secondary School Scholarship Director
Matayo, who lives in Mpwapwa town, has been a friend to Peace Corps volunteers in the district for more than 25 years and is the person everyone calls to get things done. He has directed our scholarship work since 2015, organized our hospital training in Mpwapwa and Musoma, and makes the trip out to Kingiti and Kibakwe to deliver supplies himself.
Higher Education Scholarship Director
After medical school, Deus worked for three years in Bugando Medical Centre's emergency department. With support from our donors he completed the emergency medicine residency at Muhimbili National Hospital. He now oversees our scholarships for university, nursing and medical students and emergency medicine residents.
“The ER is about critical fast thinking, timely management, and teamwork… I’ve always enjoyed my work.”
Local Director, Board Member and Advisor
Laithon Mvili was always meant to be a mwalimu, a teacher. Mwalimu Mvili, as he is known, is one of the most talented educators Kingiti has ever seen, and he serves as a volunteer local director, board member and longtime advisor.
Mvili was born in Usolanga village in the Iringa Region, one of eight children of farming parents. Their lack of wealth was typical of many families in the area, but the careers and achievements of all their children show the extraordinary upbringing they provided. Mvili credits much of that success to his mother's compassionate heart and his father's strict work ethic, summed up in words his father told him:
“One must work hard for himself or he will later be the slave of another.”
He moved to Kingiti in 2003 to teach every subject to the seventh grade at Kingiti Primary School. In his free time he runs a retail business in the village, prays at the local Catholic church and socializes in the village center. His life has been a story of resilience and faith: on his wits alone he has overcome the enormous obstacles that hold back most people who begin life with polio in a small farming village.
Ben Belknap began working in Tanzania in 2007 as Kingiti village's first Peace Corps volunteer, living in the village in Mpwapwa District. In 2008 he co-founded the Kingiti School Scholarship and Village Health Outreach Fund to continue that work. Since then the Kingiti Fund has managed education, medical and public health projects across the greater Dodoma Region. All board members serve as volunteers.
In memory
Tino was our NGO director, a teacher at the Kigwe School for the Deaf, and one of the kindest people any of us has known. He brought deaf children from villages across central Tanzania into our scholarship program, children who had often been left out entirely, and helped give them a language, an education and a place to belong. He knew every student by name, traveled the region to check on them, and sent the photos and news that connected our supporters to the kids they were helping.
Tino died suddenly in 2017 while serving as our NGO's head director. We carry on this work in his name.
Pumzike kwa amani kaka yetu
Support our work Asante sana
Everything on this page is funded by individual supporters, many of whom have given for years. If you would like to give, or to sponsor a particular student, these are the ways to reach us.
The Kingiti School Scholarship and Village Health Outreach Fund, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
90-0660568