Our Team
JOANNE STRINGFIELD
Charity Founder
Jo was born in New Zealand to Dutch immigrant parents, then married and moved to Australia in 1988 with her husband, where she has lived ever since, bringing up a family of three boys in Sydney. She started her working life as a Registered Nurse working in New Zealand hospitals for 5 years, which included 15 months working as a Nursing Officer with the New Zealand Air Force. She then joined Air New Zealand as a long-haul flight attendant before the move to Australia in 1988 where she then began her 27-year career as a flight attendant with Qantas.
After retiring, she wanted to do more with her life and began volunteering as a nurse at a hospital in Arusha, Tanzania. Following COVID, she chose not to return to the hospital but found an opportunity to volunteer at the Brainy Heroes Secondary School instead. It has become one of her greatest joys – visiting twice a year for six-week periods. Many of the boys had never spoken to a muzungu (white person) when she first arrived, but they are hungry to learn, and she feels it is her privilege to work alongside them and the amazing staff at the school.
The school is a very happy place. The deep commitment of the three founders is reflected in the kindness and joy that radiates everywhere, and the teachers are amazing, working long hours and always there for the students. They not only educate them but nurture and mentor them along the way.
However, the premises they rent are woefully inadequate and the school may be closed by the Department of Education Inspectors. So to enable it to continue providing the quality education and student welfare it does for many years to come, she has begun thus project – to raise funds for a permanent home for the Brainy Heroes Secondary School – the “Home for the Heroes”.
COLIN STRINGFIELD
Charity Co-Founder
Born in Canada to English parents, Colin grew up and was educated in New Zealand before moving to Australia with his work in 1988. His career as a senior finance and management executive saw him working in a range of companies in New Zealand and Australia and in industries ranging from manufacturing, fast food retail, hotels, container and cruise shipping and in the global beef supply chain for McDonald’s. Most of these roles were in smaller local high-growth operations as part of large multinational enterprises and Colin believes he has learned to marry a personally hands-on resourceful and pragmatic approach to the disciplines and expertise found in large corporations.
Outside work, his significant interest in the last 20 years has been volunteering in field operations with emergency services (NSW State Emergency Service) and a private not for profit disaster relief organisation.
Having now retired in good health and with broad life experience, Colin believes he has the tools and feels an obligation to help support others in the community who have not had the good fortune in life that he has. Alongside his personal volunteering, this has now led him to support his wife Joanne in her drive to provide the new home for the Brainy Heroes Secondary School in Arusha.
JACOB MTASHA
School Founder and Principal
The Brainy Heroes Secondary School is a private secondary school located in the Arusha region of Tanzania East Africa. It was founded by myself, Jacob Paul Matasha, Kwaeslema Lazaro Ng’aida, and Yaledi Elisha Kuta in 2016. It is a boarding school to enable students to study well and reduce the incidence of child labour (work that deprives children of their childhood, their dignity and their potential), and the influences of peer group pressure.
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We three met at a school as graduate teachers. In the four years that followed we became friends and shared different ideas, deciding to start a school of our own, since there was a large number of school dropouts in our country. To start the school, we shared our capital to rent premises. The buildings were old and required major repairs to meet Education Department requirements. The school is under the management of we three founders, and after starting with 14 students in 2016, we now have 11 teaching and five non-teaching staff and 220 students.