Our Story

I first visited Mali in 2010.

My passion has always been to travel to new, out-of-the way places. In 2010, to celebrate my 50th birthday, I took a bucket-list trip to fulfill a childhood dream of visiting the fabled Timbuktu, Mali in West Africa. Little did I know, during my three-day journey traveling along the Niger river by boat to reach Timbuktu, that this trip would launch a project that would turn out to be my life’s work — Caravan to Class.

While in Timbuktu for the Festival au Desert that brought West African and international musicians together for a week of spectacular music, I visited a nearby village. I was taken by the graciousness of the head of the village and his wife. Seeing that they had no school, I decided to raise funds to build one in that village for my 50th birthday. Returning to see the school built and children in class studying less than nine months later, I was incredibly moved by this experience. It was then that I decided to continue on this path to create access to education for children in other rural villages in Timbuktu.

Caravan to Class started our 17th school construction and support project in 2022. When we build a French-based school, for children ages 6 to 12 years, we support its operations for a period of three years to ensure a positive school outcome in the village. We partner with a local NGO Nord et Developpement to administer our projects and the Timbuktu Ministry of Education which sends a director to run the school under the Malian national (French language) curriculum. We added a Female Adult Literacy Program in 2014 to teach basic literacy to the students’ mothers so that they can know the joys that come from learning to read and write, which also makes them better advocates for their kids’ education.

In 2018, shortly after the tragic death of my wife, Jackie, in Africa, we launched a university scholarship program in her name. Bourse Jackie provides five full university scholarships annually to female high school graduates from Timbuktu with the clear goal of their attainment of a life-changing university degree and successful job outcome.

We could not do our work without the tremendous local team we have in place in both Bamako and Timbuktu, as well as our donors who not only generously fund our important work, but also passionately care about the cause we are serving. I hope you consider joining us on this journey.

Sincerely,

Barry Hoffner

Founder & Director

Our first video

We have come a long way since 2010, but our mission and model remains the same.