Community support in Tanzania with the STArs of Student Travel

In December of last year, we were contacted by one of our leisure specialty customers, STA Travel, the world’s largest youth travel company with adventure travel at its core, to help raise awareness, and donations for their foundation. STA challenged us to help fund a climb of Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro in order to support two charity projects that are close to their hearts in Africa via the STA Travel Foundation.

Paul Maine, Chief Commercial Officer at STA Travel, commented on the climb: ‘A walk in the park it most definitely was not, but spurred on by a brilliant group of local guides and the knowledge that we had your support behind us, we achieved our goal. Climbing Kilimanjaro is undoubtedly very tough but it is achievable, so if you are looking for a challenge in 2015, we’d all recommend it. We’re delighted that all our sponsors support will make a real difference to our key charity projects in Africa. Again thank you.’

The first project the climb helped to support is the Tanzania Women’s Cooperative, which seeks to set up a free business school for women in downtown Moshi to create opportunities to achieve sustainable and rewarding employment. The second is The Maasai Clean Stoves project, located near Arusha, Tanzania, where STA Travel saw first-hand the health benefits for very young children of replacing open fires with affordable wood burning stoves.

Through their experiences with these projects – STA Travel knows that the money they've raised truly makes a big difference in many people’s lives. We’re committed to sustainability and this also encompasses community support, so, it makes total sense to partner with our customers to support important causes such as these.

For more about some of the projects and initiatives we support around the world – have a look at our Corporate Social Responsibility Map.