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Awardees Stories
Our 2022 Awardees
ROB has so far funded over 120 students and we look forward to supporting many more in the future.
We would like to introduce you to a few of our rising star awardees who since completing their training have continued to progress their careers.
Our Latest Awardees and Programs
The Mountain Lioness Programme: Female Awardees 2022
2022 Training Awards:
Best Female in Field Training
Wadia Kapanya Kitaba
The award for our best female in field training went to Wadia Kapanya Kitaba. She graduated in 2020 and has mostly worked with the company ´Kilimanjaro Experts. ROB's team had the chance to experience her abilities and skills in the field because she was our chief guide on the Mont Meru. She is a very pleasant and passionate qualified guide. Wadia will save the 100$ to use it later for her driving course: she hopes to start the lessons in February as soon as she saves up enough money.
2022 Training Awards:
Best Female in Class
Evaline Daniely Njipaine
Evaline Daniely Njipaine was the winner of best female in class. She graduated in 2021 and has worked her the first season as a guide and she truly enjoyed it. She sent half her prize money to her two younger sisters who are still studying in school so they can buy the books they need. She split the rest between her brother, to pay for his hospital fees when he suffered appendicitis, and to buy food for her family.
2022 Training Awards:
Best Male in Class
Fadhili James
Fadhili James from our 2021 awardees, won the award of the best overall male among our last graduated awardees. He was very happy and surprised by the award. With the $100 prize money he went to visit his family for a few days, he repaired his bike, and he bought a new bed! He gave the previous bed to his sibling.
Ruth Moses
Ruth Moses is 33. She has a 10-year-old daughter, named Lucina. The father of her daughter left the family a long time ago. Her daughter lives with Ruth's parents while Ruth lives with her twin sister and her aunt. She started climbing mountains in 2017. She was working as a porter for Tanzania Trail Safari and African Walking Company when she heard about the ROB scholarships.
Since she qualified in 2019 and has been working as a guide but during the coronavirus period it was difficult to find guiding work. It was a difficult time, so she supplemented her income by cooking food to sell, making shampoo and medicine soap which she sold at the local market. She has done 3 treks as a guide since her graduation, which financially helped her a lot and enabled her to start building a house for her and her daughter. Now her dream is to finish her home at Maji ya Chai. To achieve this she needs 6 million shilling ($2600 ) and she is looking for more guiding opportunities. She also understands that she must improve her English skills to do so. She plans to start English lessons in January 2023 when Lucina, her daughter, will be back at school.
She injured her shoulder in summer 2022 during an ascent as a porter which meant she had to stop working in the mountains so she could recover. During this period, she worked for one month as a cleaner of the first base camp of Mont Meru. Yvonne, Steve, and I met her there at the first base camp. With the money she earned cleaning she was able to visit the doctor and buy her painkiller medication and n Now she is looking forward to returning to the work on the mountain for the next tourist season.
Grayson S. Mchopa
Grayson S. Mchopa has a science bachelor. He won a ROB scholarship and graduated as a guide in 2019. Since then he has been working with Tops of Tanzania as an assistant guide. He has a good level of English and says that he likes his job very much. To date he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro 20 times and Mont Meru 4 times. His intention is to continue his studies with a MSc. He passed the entrance registration exams after studying in Dodoma in October and started to pay the fees registration thanks to the money he earned this summer. The full cost of the course will be 7000$/year. He started his master’s programme at the university on the 5th of November 2022
Gertrude S Kiwelu
I am from Tanzania and I was born and raised in Arusha City. One day I met someone who told me about the sponsorship for the training to be a mountain guide. I was very interested and she introduced me to the owner of a mountain climbing company. We talked and he took me to the Mweka college for training. It changed me from being a porter to a guide. I learned a lot from the programme like how to be a guide and also to help others and I hope the training will change my life. I can say to other women that the opportunity for being a guide. Women, let's work hard, the world is there waiting for us. Thank you very much for the sponsorship now I a different person from whom I was and I can support my children but also I can do my programmes alone. Thank you very much!
Since completing her training she has worked for African Zoom and Kilimanjaro Expert company and has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice as a guide since October and she has told us that she really enjoyed the new working experience.