Project Title: Growth Through Learning

Location: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda

Grant Amount: $25,000

Grantee Website: www.growththroughlearning.org/

Areas of Impact: Economic Sustainability, Education & Literacy, Gender Equality

Mission of Growth Through Learning
To provide and enhance educational opportunities by offering scholarship aid to deserving East African girls and young women. In addition, the organization encourages a cross-cultural exchange of information and ideas between countries.

Summary
Growth Through Learning (GTL) provides 4 – 6 years of formal high school educational scholarships for girls and young women of East Africa, many of whom are orphans. The average cost to provide a scholarship is $700 per year. This amount keeps a scholar in a boarding (residential) school until she graduates with a high school diploma. This scholarship provides school fees, uniform, food, books, and accommodation.

In the last 25 years, more than 2,000 GTL scholars have graduated from high school, tertiary institutions, and universities.

Why We Love This
GTL's history resembles Together Women Rise, and their values are in line with our reasons to give internationally. What started as a tiny organization that the late Founder Roger Whiting ran out of his home has grown into an established nonprofit with offices in Cambridge, MA and Nairobi, Kenya. It is governed by an all-volunteer board of directors and has an endowment to help cover some management costs.

GTL was last funded by Together Women Rise in 2006 for $5,500, in 2007 for $8,274, and in 2008 for $12,660 for a total of $26,434. Forty-six (46) young women graduated from 2-year colleges through this financial support. They are mainly nurses, teachers, accountants, and business owners. ‘These are young women who feel empowered and assertive within their families and communities, as a result of their increasing earning power, better economic activities, and the support of a strong GTL Alumnae network’, says Wanjiku K Mwangi, GTL’s Executive Director

A GTL scholar, Diana Lubega, from Uganda says, ‘I was able to become a qualified nurse through the support of Together Women Rise. For sure I would not be what I am now. I live a better life’.

Together Women Rise has chosen GTL as a Featured Grantee for November 2023, with a grant amount of $25,000. This grant will enable GTL to pay annual high school fees for 30 scholars in 2024.