COURTESY PHOTO | Joseph Ole Tipnako Koisele, chief of the Maasai tribe from Kenya, shows a Longwood Junior High School student a necklace made by Maasai women, while explaining customs and traditions of his village, Kimuka. After Mr. Koisele's visit to Longwood, students decided to raise money to build a school in his village.

Joseph Ole Tipnako Koisele walks two hours every day to get to a small, shoddy school building in the rural village of Kimuka, Kenya.

He teaches 75 students in first through eighth grade, who cram into the 24-by-30-foot building and sit on chairs and benches, sharing scarce pieces of paper and books with tattered covers.

Mr. Koisele, 37, is the chief of his tribe, Maasai. Members of Maasai banded together to send him to college in Nairobi, the capital of the east African country, by selling their cows, goats and sheep.

After his studies, he returned to his village to repay his community and teach its youth.

But he needs help.

“There are too many children for one school,” he said.

After visiting Longwood Junior High School earlier this month and sharing stories of his culture and lifestyle, Mr. Koisele learned that the school vowed to raise $3,000 for him — the entire cost of building a new school there.

“We here have so much and when we saw such little the kids there have in terms of education, we felt this was a way to help kids in another country who are craving an education and have such little opportunity to get it,” said Longwood Junior High School principal Levi McIntyre.

Mr. Koisele said education is especially important in his village as it’s the only platform to learn English — the language spoken by Kenyan government officials. He said the government has increasingly encroached upon Maasai land in recent years, and people in his tribe haven’t been able to defend themselves. Increased access to school will allow those in his tribe to be better represented in government, he said.

In his culture, boys are given first priority when it comes to education and young girls have to sacrifice schooling to stay home and work, so he said he’ll make the new school equally accessible to both genders.

“The girls are always overlooked in the community,” he said. “We need to empower them.”

Longwood students will sell jewelry made by Maasai women during a series of fundraisers they’ll hold over the next year.

Joseph Gambino, a science teacher at the junior high who is overseeing the fundraising efforts, said the goal is to raise $3,000 by next spring. He said the school also plans to send school supplies and set up a system based on solar energy so students in Kimuka can charge the batteries of a donated laptop. Students at the Kimuka school currently have to walk to a town hours away to recharge the laptop’s batteries.

And he plans to have his students use Skype to chat with students in Kimuka so they can be face to face with the school children they’re supporting.

“We want the kids to feel they accomplished something,” he said. “We want to give kids somewhere else a chance to get the advantages we have here.”

Mr. Koisele is waiting to give his students the good news until funding from Longwood comes through.

“I’ve always been on a mission to see my people go on to a better life,” he said. “We need this school.”

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