Gem Legacy uses Arusha, Tanzania as its home base from which to operate and supervise initiatives around East Africa. As the area with the greatest depth of contacts and assets to ensure our programs continue to best support mining communities, Arusha was the best location for the Campus to be built, in addition to being the “gem center” of East Africa.

While both the College Scholarships and Gem Faceting School initiatives could be expanded without building the Campus, we feel that the Campus exponentially increases the impact of those initiatives on individual lives long-term, and therefore the value of each dollar spent from your contributions.

We would have been relying on increased sponsorship from our donors to expand both higher education programs anyway, so instead we ask you to make our annual operating costs possible, which runs the Gem Faceting School and houses students from both higher education programs.

Gem Legacy has committed to stewarding resources well to make the Campus as sustainable as possible by implementing solutions such as solar panels instead of generators and traditional electricity and rainwater harvesting instead of relying solely on purchasing water.

It is common practice in Tanzania to build a wall around property to define boundary lines and avoid disputes, as well as for safety and security for the students living on Campus.