Building A Community Through
Education & Support

Imagine that one night you are woken up to a noise...the next minute at gun-point! You and your family are bundled into the back of a truck and driven to a desolate desert area where you are left to die. The people of the Kalahari region in South Africa went through this during the Apartheid regime. The Kalahari Experience was set-up to bring a little bit of hope back to their desolate communities.

The Kalahari Experience is a service project initiated by Frankfurt International School (FIS). The desire is to equip students with the required skills, knowledge and the self-belief that they can make a difference, not only in their own lives but in their community as well. Since 1991 teams of volunteers have been working with the Tswana people in the Moshaweng Valley in South Africa. Students and teachers travel to the desert at their own expense to teach, to renovate schools, to bring much needed educational supplies. FIS students give and gain much - teaching their fellow students in South Africa, making friends and unforgettable experiences.

The Kalahari Experience is currently managed by Ambrose Kelly OAM, the Director of The Kalahari Experience at FIS. For over twenty years, Ambrose Kelly and his wife Dr. Dorothea Kelly had been actively involved in supporting the people of Kalahari with food and medical aid This project, a pilot of its kind world-wide, and is being closely followed by the European Council of International Schools, who in 2005 awarded the ECIS Outreach Award to Ambrose Kelly for his work in the Kalahari.