Welcome to the website of iThemba Foundation.
iThemba was founded in September 2006 by a group of enthusiastic young professionals. "iThemba" means "hope" in Xhosa, one of the languages of South-Africa. And that is exactly what iThemba wants to contribute to: to give hope to a better future through education to the economically weak throughout Africa, mainly in rural areas.
Many African countries are rich in raw materials, minerals, precious materials, even oil, but are not capable of exploiting their natural resources. Many African countries therefore remain poor. This poverty especially hits rural areas, where unemployment is all around and crime and AIDS have truly destructive consequences.
iThemba is convinced that sound education can be an important tool to help people escape this poverty and even lift up and develop a country as a whole. That is why iThemba wants to support, with all possible means, meaningful educational projects of a high quality in economically poor developed area’s in Africa. iThemba especially aims at supporting smaller schools in rural area’s, which are often deprived of even the most basic financial and material means. iThemba’s first project was supporting a small primary school in De Rust, South Africa. iThemba’s second project, the Baraa Primary School in Arusha, Tanzania, is conceived along the same line: supporting development through education.
iThemba’ working method is unique. Your support is entirely used to the benefit of the projects we support. All working costs of our Foundation are personally borne by the members of the board. The local projects are closely monitored by the board, by reliable local representatives and by member of other small scale organisations we are working together with. We demand permanent and transparent reporting by the local representatives on all the expenses they make. That way, we can guarantee our supporters and sponsors that every single cent they donate ends up where it belongs. Our sincere thanks for your interest and support!
The board of iThemba:Mark Crommen - Thierry De Jonghe - Yves Montangie - Karen Moser - Karel Nijs - Miguel Van Hoof - Sandra Van Roy
All pictures on this website Ó R. Vandewiele, F. Pienaar, J. Nienhuis