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LivLife is a charity dedicated to enriching the lives of poor people in Tanzania through locally relevant education and empowerment.

We deliver free education to the poorest of society without asking questions or discriminating; we offer training to develop skills and we offer friendly spaces for children to help them develop and learn - and what’s more, we do it with a smile.

Our LivLife Centres provide people with realistic opportunities to get themselves out of poverty through learning and employment.

These education centres are locally run and crucially, they are entirely free to use, giving everyone in the communities we work with the opportunity to live their life on their own terms.

We broke ground on our first Centre on July 13th 2005. Co-founder Max Griffiths and residents of Meserani Village came together with the University of Nottingham to build the Centre together. On September 13th 2005 hundreds of locals gathered outside to witness the opening of the first centre. The ribbon was cut with a Maasai knife and so our journey began.

Continuing to inspire us is our team of staff in Tanzania. LivLife believes in people, it’s who we are. We love seeing how our students and staff develop, learn and grow in confidence.

Our education centres are all staffed entirely by Tanzanians. All our staff used to be students with us and some go back further. Eva, our kindergarten assistant, Naomi, our kindergarten teacher, Sakaya, our receptionist and Loinyakwa, our night guard, came to volunteer in our first week of building in July 2005! We’ve taken great delight in seeing them learn, develop and progress, as we have with all our staff and students.

2008 saw our first kindergarten intake. We’ve always believed in the powerful impact education can have, but the kindergarten was a revelation. Creating a space for children, most of whom have never held a pencil or sat in a classroom, and creating a curriculum with fun at its core.

Each of our students has their own story to tell. Some are coming to us in later life as the opportunity wasn’t available the first time around; others want to learn how to use a computer so they can find employment to support their family, some just want to be able to read the instructions on the medicine bottle for their cattle.

Livlife was founded by friends Max Griffiths and Sam Yates and is currently managed by a board of trustees in the UK, which include Sam Yates, David Adam and Ruth Taylor. If you’d like to contact Livlife, please email sam@livlife.org.

free education

OUR STORY

They imagined it,
together we built it.

We broke ground on our first Centre on July 13th 2005. Led by our co-founder Max Griffiths, residents of Meserani Village came together with students from the University of Nottingham to build the Centre together. On September 13th 2005 hundreds of locals gathered outside to witness the opening of the first centre. The ribbon was cut with a Maasai knife and so our journey began.

Continuing to inspire us is our team of staff in Tanzania. LivLife believes in people, it’s who we are. We love seeing how our students and staff develop, learn and grow in confidence.

Our education centres are all staffed entirely by Tanzanians under the skilled guidance of Nai, our manager. All our staff used to be students with us and some go back further. Eva, our kindergarten assistant, Naomi, our kindergarten teacher, Sakaya, our receptionist and Loinyakwa, our night guard, came to volunteer in our first week of building in July 2005! We’ve taken great delight in seeing them learn, develop and progress, as we have with all our staff and students.

2008 saw our first kindergarten intake. We’ve always believed in the powerful impact education can have, but the kindergarten was a revelation. Creating a space for children, most of whom have never held a pencil or sat in a classroom, and creating a curriculum with fun at its core.

Each of our students has their own story to tell. Some are coming to us in later life as the opportunity wasn’t available the first time around; others want to learn how to use a computer so they can find employment to support their family; some just want to be able to read the instructions on the medicine bottle for their cattle. We could tell you hundreds of stories, but none embodies the spirit of LivLife more than Alex Meliyo.

Alex joined us on the day we opened. He couldn’t read or write and he was living in poverty. He’d had some land taken from him unfairly and he was struggling to support his family. He came to us so he could learn how to read and write and take his case to a tribunal to get his land back. We’ve never known a student more dedicated than Alex. Every day he was at the Centre - in classes, in the library, anywhere. Every day he grew in confidence, he grew in pride and after four years of hard work we were able to offer him a job as our outreach teacher - a fitting reward for his dedication.

A year later, in 2010, and now with the skills and funds to go to tribunal, we were delighted to hear that it was ruled that Alex should get his land back.

And the twist in the tale? Well now with a reliable income and having seen first hand the benefit that education can have, Alex donated the land to us to build our first outreach centre.