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  • Place

    Caravan to Class is inspired by the idea of the Camel Caravans that used to traverse the Sahara Desert near Timbuktu, Mali.

  • People

    Caravan to Class works closely with local villagers, ensuring their commitment to prioritize the education of their deserving children.

  • Educators

    Caravan to Class is grateful to the teachers and their commitment to bring literacy to the children of far away villages in Africa.


  • Inspiration

    Caravan to Class gets its inspiration to advocate for literacy in the Southern Sahara from the children of the villages where we operate.

  • The Place

  • The People

  • The Educators

  • Our Inspiration

Imagine a world...  where no matter where a child
lives, the fundamental right of education is assured.

Caravan to Class brings education to the children of Mali, and in the future other countries in Africa, village by village, reversing the injustice of illiteracy. Find out about:

With your support in helping to educate a child in one of the villages where Caravan to Class operates, we not only bring the gift of literacy directly to a child in a village in Africa, but also break the cycle of illiteracy in the child’s family and bring hope for the future to the village.

FEBRUARY, 2020

Image of students crowded into the degraded school in Dourgou that Caravan to Class will rebuild
Image of students crowded into the degraded school in Dourgou that Caravan to Class will rebuild

The Dourgou school construction and operational support project:

Caravan to Class will build our 15th school in the village of Dourgou and provide operational support for three years. Operational support will include paying teachers’ salaries, providing basic nutrition for school lunches, and school supplies. In addition, Caravan to Class will provide school uniforms to all children and also implement our award-winning Female Adult Literacy program. The school will follow Malian standard instruction in French. The Timbuktu Ministry of Education will send a director, at their expense, to run the school and certify teachers for class instruction.

Make a donation now to Caravan to Class to help fund the Dourgou school construction project.

MALI – FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Greetings from Mali!

It is hard to believe that I am starting my second decade of annual trips to Mali. Every year as I take my first steps onto the streets of this big West African capital, Bamako, it is easy to first notice the chaos, dirt, and poverty. Your senses are bombarded by this as anyone who has been in a West Africa capital knows. This is also supported by the data from the UN Human Development Index, which shows that eight of the fifteen countries at the bottom of this index are from West Africa (including Mali at 5th from the bottom), and another four from neighboring Central Africa. However, on this trip, as on others, by my second day it was easy to see through the first layer and get a strong glimpse of the resilience, friendliness, industriousness and hope.

Image of the interview webpage on Pencils for Africa In this May 5, 2019, INTERVIEW with Pencils for Africa, Executive Director and Founder Barry Hoffner tells of his lifelong wish to visit Timbuktu, and subsequently, how Caravan To Class came about and the motivation behind the organization's work.
 

Image of Barry Hoffner and Hamadou Toure with the 2019 recipients of the “Bourse Jackie” Scholarship
Image of Barry Hoffner and Hamadou Toure with the 2019 recipients of the “Bourse Jackie” Scholarship

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 17th, Hamadou Toure, local partner of Caravan to Class, and I met with the five recipients of the “Bourse Jackie” Scholarship in the courtyard of my B&B. The five women were selected by ranking the highest on our scoring system, which included their school grades, a writing sample, and a test we administered. It was important for us to have an objective determination of the final recipients so as to completely rule out any favoritism. The initial applicant pool was roughly 50 young women, and we administered an exam to the 12 finalists. The average score of the 12 twelve finalists was 70.2, with the lowest at 47.1 and the highest at 98. The average score of the 5 scholarship recipients was 81.2.

I was very impressed with all five of the Bourse Jackie recipients, and with two of them in particular. As they warmed up, the level of engagement was very high and their enthusiasm, motivation, and intelligence definitely made a strong impression on me. Our process seems to have chosen the perfect recipients.
 

February 5, 2018

PRESS RELEASE

Caravan to Class launches "Bourse Jackie" university scholarship program for female high school graduates in Timbuktu

Program will honor Jackie Hoffner, wife of founder of Caravan to Class

As Caravan to Class begins its ninth year of operations focused on literacy in one of Africa’s historically significant places, Timbuktu, the organization has launched The Young Women's University Scholarship Program, a new program to create real "change-makers" by providing 4-year scholarships for five high school graduates from Timbuktu to attend university in Bamako, the capital of Mali in West Africa.

Mamma Haidara Library of Manuscripts

View this report about our visit with Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, whose brave efforts have helped save thousands of Mali's ancient manuscripts from destruction. Dr. Haidara's team and their work is the subject of the book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster. April 2016, ISBN 9781476777405).

Our Latest Impact Report


View our latest Impact Report to learn how your support has helped Caravan to Class bring literacy to children and adult women of Mali.

Our Latest Impact Report


View our latest Impact Report to learn how your support has helped Caravan to Class bring literacy to children and adult women of Mali.

Support a Student

Image of student - learn how to support a child's education for one year

Our Schools in Action

Image of teacher - learn how to sponsor a teacher

Watch this video of girls reciting the alphabet in our school in Tombouz, Timbuktu, Mali.

Support Operations

Image of teacher - learn how to support teachers and classroom operations

A student in a Caravan to Class school writes...

"Caravan to Class helps assure a good education for all students, which guaranties a better future. I love to read… to read a book or a letter to my parents, who can't read… or simply to read information from some place far away."
~ Fadimata Walet, 6th grade, Tedeini school

Featured

Read the interview with CTC founder Barry Hoffner,  catch up with progress on literacy programs and Caravan-to-Class press releases.

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Video of our work

Caravan to Class video

Drone footage of the Kokonji school newly-built by Caravan to Class in Mali