Canadian Harambee Education Society
Giving girls the chance to educate themselves

About us

Our mission is to improve the quality of life of women and their communities in Kenya and Tanzania by providing secondary education scholarships for girls.

At CHES, we believe:

• that if you educate a girl, you educate a society
• that educating women results in lower infant and maternal mortality, healthier, smaller, better educated families and greater economic advancement agrarian communities

95% of money donated for Africa goes to Africa. Administrative costs, such as postage, brochures and so on, are covered by the remaining 5%, which are also paid for by other fund raisers and specific donations.

Find out more about how we use your money.

The Board of Directors of CHES in Canada and Agents in Africa are volunteers who receive no payment from CHES.

CHES is a non-profit organization without affiliation to government or religious organizations.

Our history

CHES was founded in 1985 by a young Canadian teacher who ran a school in East Africa and was struck by the hunger for her students to learn. Children would even steal or turn to prostitution to raise money for their tuition. When she returned to Canada, she set up the Canadian Harambee Education Society.

CHES operated solely in Kenya until 1992, when it branched out, at the request of a poverty-stricken local community. CHES has run twin programmes for scholarships for girls in these neighbouring countries ever since.

Since its start, CHES has subsidized the educations of several thousand girls. Many have gone on the professional careers in medicine, research, accounting, education, engineering, technical and trades.

Recently, CHES has begun larger projects to assist with the infrastructure of education: dormitories, computer rooms, supporting elementary school programmes and even improving water supplies.