Hoja began as a desire to build a secondary school in the Songea region of Tanzania.  It has since evolved into a project which targets specific needs of the community.

Hello.  I’m Phil.  I’ve been there or thereabouts since Hoja first began, although not always heavily involved.  While updating the site and this page, I thought that rather than just list off a load of dates and events, I’d give you my account of the Hoja Project. 

I’ll do my best to keep it as concise as possible.

In 2004, fresh out of university, I embarked on my first big adventure: a seven month volunteer project in Tanzania with a charity called SPW.  One thing that marked SPW out for me, was its use of local volunteers, as well as international ones like me.

I ended up placed with a Tanzanian volunteer in a village called Ihalimba in Iringa region.  The next village was called Nundwe, and among the four volunteers there were a Tanzanian called Oswin and an English girl called Julia.

Our programme was aimed at youth and women.  We worked with children in the local primary schools, and recruited enthusiastic young and female villagers to help raise awareness about health and social issues, most significantly HIV/Aids.

One evening in Nundwe, while I was helping Oswin to fetch the chickens inside, he asked me to help him to build and run a secondary school in his home village of Mpandangindo, down in Songea region.

There was no nearby secondary school, so even some of those students who passed their exams and could afford school fees, could not afford to travel to school.

This was a huge task for relatively inexperienced volunteers to take on, however, and upon our return to the UK, we quickly realised how daunting a project we had made for ourselves.

Luckily, however, the Tanzanian Government started building a secondary school anyway, leaving us with the no less important, but much less difficult task of helping local children gain access to the school.

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The Hoja Project UK, 7 Manor Mansions, Belsize Park Gardens, London NW3 4NB, United Kingdom

+44 7584 065 211 | uk@hojaproject.org | The Hoja Project UK is a registered charity no. 1111350