Johnston Group created the Advisor Charitable Match Program to team up with our advisors across the country who are supporting community initiatives that make a difference.
July 2024
Imagine being six years old and having to walk miles to school every day in unrelenting heat. You carry all your water for the day because it may not be available at your school. How well would you be able to focus on your studies?
That is the challenge students in many schools across Tanzania face as they try to get their education. Knowing this, Kam Haji approached his business partners, Garet Stewart and Shaylene Flanagan, at The Benefits Advisory Group about setting up a charity to help provide students with dependable access to water – and they didn’t hesitate.
Tanzanians generally have access to water, but it’s rationed by the government. If it ever gets turned off, people in towns and schools have to go without.
The trio created Ground-Up Foundation to install holding tanks at primary schools to ensure students and staff had access to water at all times. The initiative started with building one tank for a school in Morogoro and is now maintaining over 26 tanks serving close to 30,000 students.
“For the first few years it was difficult. We would only install once a year when Kam and his dad could do it themselves,” says Stewart. Now they’ve hired two local people to help build and maintain tanks and stay in contact with the schools.
Kam and Garet at The Benefits Advisory Group are local, exclusive advisors for Chambers Plan group benefits in Edmonton, AB. The Plan’s administrator, Johnston Group, was excited to help share their story and match their contribution through Johnston Group’s Advisor Charitable Match Program. This initiative is designed to support charitable organizations that are having a direct impact on communities.
Shaylene says it really hit home when she saw the impact they were having. “It creates a sense of pride for the people who go to the school and the teachers who work there,” says Flanagan. “It was really humbling.”
Kam says he’s grateful to be able to work with his father, Riyaz, and two other people they hired locally to establish a program in their home country, “This is the starting point of building a future for children and communities from the ground up,” says Kam. “Starting with water.”
