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Spread the word from home

Help us Fundraise

smiling bandari students playing on tyre swing

At the Bandari Project we welcome all interest from people wanting to help us fundraise and spread the word about what we are doing all across Australia, and the world!  

You could run a trivia night, movie night, a dinner, cocktail party, ball…the possibilities are endless! If you have an idea, please get in touch below. We’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch

You can also help spread the word by:

👉  following us on Facebook and Instagram.
👉  Engaging on our posts! Like, Comment, share and/or save.
👉  Tagging a friend who you think would be interested.
👉  Telling your friends and family about us and invite them to follow us too!

These small acts will literally help spread the word of our project, helping us to gain support, sponsors and recruit volunteers!

2018 Volunteers - The Bandari Project
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Volunteering at home and in Tanzania

The Bandari Project Volunteers in Tanzania standing together at new playground equipment
Contact Us below if you are interested in Joining us on our next trip to tanzania [easter school holidays 2026]

Have the experience of a lifetime, visit us and volunteer with us in Tanzania.  We organise guided trips every Easter from Australia to Mto wa Mbu, where for three weeks you work at the school, go on Safari in the magical Serengeti and visit the beautiful beaches of Zanzibar. 

Or, you can plan a volunteer trip at a time that suits you, and we can help you organise everything.  It really is an unforgettable experience!

Contact us if you would like to notified of our next trip to Tanzania. 

We would also love to hear from you, if you feel you have a skills or knowledge that you feel could be a valuable addition to our team of volunteers!

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What it’s like to volunteer at the Bandari Project: 

If you are considering a trip to Tanzania to volunteer with the Bandari Project, let me tell you a little about what you can expect. It really was the perfect mix of work and play!
Each day we would head to the school in the morning and work on a range of projects. Of course, the tasks will vary each year, but Catherine and Seif really tailor this closely to the volunteer group’s skills and interests. Our group did everything from…
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“Our group did everything from Professional Development for the teachers, to building an outdoor classroom, to painting a mural on the dining hall wall. My job was to sort out the Library, cataloging the books and resources, as each year many books are kindly donated and brought to Mto Wa Mbu in the volunteer’s spare luggage allocations. I also painted outdoor furniture, sang to the kinder kids and dancing with the older kids, while my husband built compost heaps, installed bookshelves and helped to start building a woodfire oven. We had people labelling, contacting, videoing and editing footage for social media, fixing play equipment and running art workshops. There really is something for everyone, so you needn’t worry about not being ‘useful’ in the practical sense, there is always something to do.
The afternoons were spent exploring the town, swimming (It was rather hot!), watching the locals play soccer and acquainting ourselves with the food and local beer. Tour guide Seif provided plenty of opportunities for us to be tourists as well as volunteers. We visited a Masai village, frequented the goat market, went on safari in the Serengeti and visited woodcarving studios, art classes, tailors and fabric shops where we could support the local economy whilst also collecting some souvenirs to take home. A few of us even discovered a local coffee shop, with a barista trained in Melbourne to get our morning caffeine fix!
If you are someone who is worried about the white saviour complex, I can guarantee you will get more out of this experience than the people of Mto Wa Mbu. Ok, maybe just as much. I like to think of it as a cultural exchange. The kids at the Bandari Project School loved having us there to practice their English on, play soccer with and have a giggle about the way us white people dance! We thoroughly enjoyed soaking up the sights and sounds, witnessing some of their cultural practices and reflecting on their collectivist culture and admiring the way they are always thinking about the good of the group. Very different to our individualist culture, that’s for sure! We also got a real kick out of their colourful zest for life and passion for learning.

Our own kids were 11 and 13 years old when we visited Mto Wa Mbu and really surprised us with their adaptability and willingness to soak in all they could from the experience. They are still saying “Karibu” and “Asante Sana” like it was yesterday. It is certainly something that none of us will ever forget.”

Written by Bianca – 2025 Bandari Volunteer

Volunteers have helped our project grow!

What you can do to help

sponsor a child

Give the gift of a brighter future, and make a big impact.

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Make a Donation

Support the ongoing running costs of our project. 

Donate

Support a project

Volunteer, help spread the word,  or fundraise.

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Team

Our Volunteers

Martin Dunstan

President

Martin has been our president since November 2020, he has worked for almost 30 years as a livestock extension officer with Agriculture Victoria, and before this was a secondary teacher.

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Martin and wife Karen have volunteered at the Bandari Project and have also spent time in Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia, gaining valuable insight into the benefits of successful development projects.

Martin has a strong interest in social justice. He is conscious of his own privilege as a middle class Australian, and the need to find permanent solutions to third world poverty. He is excited by the opportunities that the school and the women’s project will provide in enabling the poorest in the Mto wa Mbu community to make their own way in the world.

Gloria

Project Manager

Gloria is from the small town of Moshi, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. She has a Masters of Arts in Sociology from Saint Augustine University in Mwanza, and has experience as a project officer and a teacher. 

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She is excited by the challenge of moving to Mto wa Mbu and working on a diverse range of projects that her position offers. Gloria started her position with the Bandari Project in April 2016.

Seif Sakate

Co Founder

Seif is a qualified secondary school teacher in Tanzania, and is currently studying Psychology(Honors) in Australia. He was born in Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania in a small village right at the foot of the Great Rift Valley.

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At Rotary one evening, Seif, our guest speaker, suggested he would like to build a kinder in his home village of Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania. Geoff was immediately interested in this idea and was a member of the inaugural volunteer trip in 2015, when a group of naïve Aussies visited Africa having no knowledge of the extreme difference in culture to that of Oz.

This was a huge learning curve, with our volunteers being greatly educated over the next few years by our wonderful project manager Glory, and chef Thomas.

Geoff would like to thank Seif and Catherine for the amazing experiences he has had over the last few years with our Bandari Project. At 75, he feels that he is getting a bit old, but looks forward to future developments of the project.

meet the rest of the team