ABOUT Kibo Group International
- Who We Are
- About our name/How We Began
- Who We Serve
- Our Motivation to Serve
- Our Philosophy
- Our Desired Partners/Projects
Who We Are
Kibo Group is a U.S. based and registered 501©3 organization focusing on creative development initiatives in East Africa. We strive to grow deep relationships with Africans as we partner with them to address the challenges of extreme poverty and take their communities to new heights.
About our Name / How We Began
Kibo - (pronounced, "kee-bow") is the highest point in Africa, the peak of Mt Kilimanjaro rising nearly 20,000 feet above the plains of Tanzania. It has long been the goal of many Western climbers who go each year and pay thousands of dollars to take the challenge of climbing to Uhuru (freedom) peak. The Kibo group was founded by a group of such climbers in 1998. Fifteen of us made the five-day climb. Half of us lived in East Africa at the time and collectively we represented over 80 years of living and working in Africa.Our trip to the highest point in Africa inspired us to help take African communities to their highest points. Since that climb we have been funding various small-scale projects in partnership with East Africans.
Who We Serve
At present we limit our interaction with countries located in the Lake Victoria basin, focusing on the countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. Within this region, we will serve any group or person regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or gender.Our Motivation to Serve
Kibo Group is not a religious organization but we are motivated by our creator God. Our faith in Jesus inspires us to serve the poor and the oppressed unconditionally.While you are within the "About Us" section of our website, we want to make it clear that it's not about us. ("It" being the overall big picture.) It is about the God-given creativity found in human beings. We believe that creativity truly is God-given so we have no interest in pursuing creative ideas without pursuing God.
Whenever people pursue "development" (economic gain, educational improvement, health-care improvement, etc) without pursuing God they are pursuing good things -- they are pursuing God's gifts to humanity. We don't insist that people pursue God rather than His gifts, we work with anyone and everyone, but we operate under the belief that pursuing the giver is more useful and primary than pursuing the gifts.
When thinking about development, areas such as economics and social anthropology have long been scrutinized and subdivided into areas of great minutia, yet spiritual issues are often set aside as subjective, divisive and irrelevant to development studies. It is ironic that many of the world's experts in development are Westerners who think and speak little of faith, yet they are trying to impact a third-world environment where faith in a higher power is one of the few things that nearly everyone agrees on.
Our Philosophy
Kibo is driven by five principles:
- We will facilitate creative development ideas in East Africa
- We will be good stewards of our financial resources
- We will have very little organizational superstructure
- We will have strong relationships with our partners
- We are driven and inspired by our faith but open to working with anyone
Our Desired Partners / Projects
One of the first things tourists notice when visiting Africa is the amazing creativity of its people. Creative displays aren't limited only to artists and musicians. Creativity is on display in everyday life as old tin cans are turned into oil burning lamps, discarded tires are refitted into the world's toughest footwear, and when tire rims become charcoal stoves. Resources are few, nothing is wasted, and resilience and resourcefulness are evident everywhere as people craft something out of nothing over and over again.The Kibo Group is looking for partners with great ideas for making their communities better: ideas about education, about healthcare, about technology, about business -- anything that can help a community on its way to a higher point. The ideas we like best are usually simple, local, sustainable and well thought out. We also like ideas that are new, socially aware and entrepreneurial.
We don't always have the projects, we don't always have the agenda, but rather a desire to partner with creative young (and old) Africans who know their communities, know their needs and have creative solutions they'd like to try. We know they are out there. We have partnered with them in small ways in the past and we look forward to partnering with more.
Intentions can be great; it's when they make the transition into interventions that problems often arise. Interventions by well-intentioned individuals and groups such as ours have a long history in Africa...and it has not always been a positive history. Accordingly, Kibo forges each partnership with certain limitations in mind. While proposed projects should be simple, local, sustainable and well thought out, that does not necessarily mean they will be simple, low tech and boring. Development is becoming increasingly difficult to define as Africans recreate and redefine daily what it means to be indigenous in the face of increasing interactions with Western modernity.