About us
Upendo Foundation Australia’s sole purpose is to provide the financial means to operate our children's home at the base of Mt Kilimanjaro, Boma Ngombe, Tanzania.
Our Australian team comprises of generous volunteers, sponsors and donors who support our Tanzanian team to provide a safe refuge for children who have no family support.
We are a registered Australian charity with a gift deductible status. No one who works in our charity gets paid.
We aim to enrich and transform the lives of our children and the lives of those who support us.
Our story
Initially conceived and established 2009 by Melbournian Luke Bennett as an art school for street kids, we’ve expanded his vision to providing a loving nurturing home, quality education and opportunities and pathways to employment.
Upendo Foundation Australia Inc. (UFA) is the funding source for the Tanzanian NGO called Upendo Foundation and Child Light (UF&CL). UFA&CL has a Tanzanian board of directors and is fully compliant with local regulations and work with the local authorities to ensure all the children we take in are truly needy.
Our team on the ground in Tanzania are dedicated to our children who sadly all have distressing backgrounds ranging from physical and sexual abuse, abandonment, hardship and some are orphaned from the effects of
HIV and AIDS pandemic.
Some children arrive to our home with long-term health problems, some with psychological scars, some undernourished during their first three years of life and may suffer from lifetime lowered brain function.
We strive every day to provide these beautiful children a better future and hope as they grow up they will make a positive contribution to their community and break that cycle of poverty.
We know that a quality education leads to better life for our children. With percentages stacked against African girls and young women our hope is to broaden their possibilities, choices, opportunities and sovereignty.
"Children are the rock upon which our future will be built"
Nelson Mandela
Our dream
Our big dream is to purchase a perfect piece of land with enough space where the children can grow and play, arable rich soils to grow our own food and to build from ground up a purpose-built accommodation facility to appropriately house our current 19 children ranging in age from 2 to 21 years and in time grow the facility to accommodate double the amount of vulnerable children.
We envision the creation of a small cottage business that can supplement our income in-country and provide employment for more needy people.
The challenge
Today we have great systems in place. A Tanzanian board and staff team are dedicated to our children’s wellbeing – who genuinely love and care for them.
Our biggest ongoing challenge is finding a suitable permanent place to do this. The current lease finishes at the end of 2023 and we will need to move again (the fourth time in the last 10 years). Finding a suitable home to fit our 19 children is increasingly difficult and very unsettling for our already vulnerable children.
In Tanzania landlords are not legally responsible for upkeep and maintenance of already disintegrating premises. We pay these costs!!
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Join our family – pledge to the Land and building fund. In the grand scheme of things what we are seeking is a drop in the bucket. Your generosity will transform many hundreds of lives now and in the future.
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Best of all its tax deductible
Contributing to this dream will become a collective legacy we will all be very proud of.