Burundi is consistently ranked among the poorest countries in the world. Since the 1970s, Burundi has been a recurring source of refugees as tens of thousands are forced to flee to neighboring countries. Bad governance, dictatorships and political power struggles have triggered ethnic cleansing and genocides for decades. This constant social and political instability is one of the biggest contributors to Burundian poverty.
Our founder and Board of Directors created the Burundi Education Fund and began operating in Burundi in 2010. A small country in East Africa, Burundi is bordered by Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Burundi has been called the Switzerland of Africa because of its beautiful mountainous terrain, but it is one of the world’s poorest countries. It shares the same colonial past as its neighbor Rwanda, and has endured similar ethnic cleansing and genocide events over the past decades. Burundi’s most recent civil war lasted 13 years (1993-2006) and it has been in the midst of another political and security crisis since 2015. In addition to paying tuition and providing supplemental nutrition for students, while in Burundi we built a 26-bed dormitory for the girls of Muramba High School, reducing their risk of assault on the long commute to and from school. In the Mubimbi district, we built a water system to provide drinking water for more than 1,900 students. In 2015, the Burundian government imposed severe restrictions on non-governmental organizations operating in the country. We at Burundi Education Fund could no longer pursue our mission there and have redirected our efforts to serve Burundi refugee children living in Rwanda and Uganda. Now, as Beyond the Camp, our mission remains: finding impactful ways to help children pursue their education.