The first project for which Bollé Bollé raised funds in 2002 is the St. Leo The Great English Medium Pre- and Primary School in Igunga, Tanzania. This co-educational English-language primary school was founded by Father Bolle and today counts approximately 600 students, about 450 of whom stay at the boarding school. Many children come from remote villages in the district and sometimes have to travel for nearly a day to reach the school. Therefore, they stay at school for two periods of five full months and only go home for one month during the two long school holidays.
From Swahili school to top-tier English medium institution
The school was originally founded in 2000 as a Swahili-language primary school. Due to the increasing demand for English-language education, Father Bolle decided in 2004 to transform the school into an English-medium institution. After all, English is the second official language of Tanzania. Since then, all subjects have been taught in English, with the exception of Swahili, the mother tongue of most Tanzanians.
Tanzanian primary education consists of seven years, from Grade I to Grade VII. In 2011, the first students graduated after completing the full English-language curriculum.
A campus that grew year after year
Thanks to the structural support of Bollé Bollé, the school has been systematically expanded year after year since 2002. Today, the campus features:
- 14 classrooms and 1 nursery classroom
- 4 dormitories with a total of 450 beds
- 1 multipurpose refectory with kitchen (500 m²)
- 1 administrative building (converted in 2017)
- 1 computer lab and library (equipped in 2013)
- 6 water tanks with a total storage capacity of 130,000 liters of rainwater
- A Naiade water purification system for safe drinking water
- A sustainable solar-powered water supply network
- An advanced energy installation (2018) with:
- 40 solar panels (11,000 Wp)
- 114 LED lamps
- 24 batteries of 2600 Ah
- 1 inverter of 10,000 Watts
- 2.1 km of new electrical cabling
- 2 nursery classrooms (2022)
- Staff room and storage (2022)
- A library for the nursery students (2022)
- A 125m borehole for permanent water supply (2025)
Growing in independence
What is particularly motivating is that the school, under the leadership of the sisters who manage St. Leo The Great, is increasingly taking independent initiatives. In 2022, they carried out several improvements entirely on their own:
- 24 new washbasins next to the dining hall
- Smoke detectors in all dormitories
- Repair and repainting of the plasterwork in 7 of the 14 classrooms
It is heartwarming to see how these projects by Father Bolle function with increasing autonomy, supported by a local team ready to further build the future.
Elsewhere on the campus, significant work continued as well. Eleven years after the inauguration of the graduation hall, where the first students graduated, the building was in need of renovation. The sisters had:
- all interior and exterior walls replastered,
- and the entire building repainted.
This was no luxury: the hall is intensively used as a dining hall, graduation space, theater, debating location, meeting place, and even as an official venue for national elections and referendums. For example, in August, 120 randomly selected citizens from the Igunga district gathered in the graduation hall for three weeks to debate topics such as education, healthcare, climate, employment, and energy.
A school with lasting impact
Thanks in part to the good infrastructure and logistical support, the school has also performed exceptionally well academically for years. During the national exams of the Ministry of Education, the school achieved an impressive 14th place for graduating Grade VII students in 2016, and a fantastic first place for Grade IV students. And this was out of more than 1,600 English medium schools throughout Tanzania!
The St. Leo The Great School has thus grown into one of the best schools in the region and even among the top in the country. What began as a small Swahili school has, thanks to Father Bolle's vision and the ongoing commitment of Bollé Bollé, evolved into a future-oriented, high-quality educational institution where hundreds of children receive opportunities that would otherwise remain out of reach.