Climbing Kilimanjaro for a Good Cause

In June 2019, Jonathan Justice traveled to Tanzania where he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, observed wildlife on the Serengeti Plain, raised funds to support education for girls and boys in the Mara region, and visited with Biden School alumnus Fratern (Masika) Tarimo (MPA '09).

The Kilimanjaro climb was both the realization of a lifelong dream for Justice and a project of the nonprofit organization Tanzania Development Support (TDS) to raise funds for the Nyegina Secondary School and the Madaraka Nyerere Library and Community Resource Center in Nyegina, Tanzania. Every member of the TDS group, including two students and a teacher from the Secondary School, and Mdaraka Nyerere himself, made it safely to the summit of Kilimanjaro and back. The effort raised nearly $100M Tanzanian shillings.

After descending from the mountain, the group spent a weekend recovering in Arusha, Tanzania, where alumnus Masika Tarimo lives and works. Justice and Tarimo enjoyed a leisurely lunch at George's Tavern in Arusha, where they caught up, reminisced about working together, and compared notes on recent news. 

For part of his time in the MPA program, Tarimo was funded by the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research to work as Justice's research assistant. That work researching nongovernmental organizations' efforts to promote government fiscal transparency resulted in a conference paper and eventually a scholarly article in Public Finance and Management. 

During his time in Delaware, Tarimo also worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Center for Community Research and Services (CCRS) in Wilmington, worked as the coordinator of the Innternationale House in Newark, and was the summer recreation program coordinator for the City of New Castle, Delaware. Masika also addressed Biden School faculty, students, and parents as a 2009 convocation speaker. 

Tarimo is now putting his MPA training and experience to work as an independent consultant and trainer in the areas of governance; planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning (PMEL); organizational development; and policy influencing. He is also a co-director of In-depth Consulting Group Limited, a firm that provides management services to the development sector in Eastern and Southern Africa. His prior work includes stints at the Management for Development Foundation's Eastern and Southern Africa office, and as managing director for the Foundation For Tomorrow, an NGO that supports orphans as well as capacitating teachers and school administrators to effectively manage schools.