Climb the Mountain,
Change a Life

In her early thirties, Catherine Mulvale survived a life-threatening illness that fundamentally changed how she saw the world and what she wanted to do with it. She went on to found a charitable organization focused on infectious disease awareness — and it was a fundraising trip for that work that first brought her to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

On that Kilimanjaro climb, Catherine got to know local people and saw firsthand the scale of Tanzania's orphan crisis — a country where international adoption isn't an option for most families. That encounter became the Global Friends Foundation. Its first project was transforming a two-room mud hut that housed 36 orphans and two caregivers into a proper, safe home — the Rafiki Orphan Care Home — complete with dormitories, washrooms, a kitchen, and safe water for drinking, cooking, and hygiene.

Global Friends stayed with many of those children through their entire educational journey. Today, some of them are teachers, tourism professionals, or university and vocational students. The foundation's scholarship programs have helped supplement government efforts to educate needy youth in Tanzania, with graduates going on to jobs at Kilimanjaro International Airport, logistics companies, and local tour operators — taking real financial pressure off vulnerable families and giving young people a genuine sense of belonging and motivation.

This isn't the first time a Kilimanjaro climb has been used to fund this work directly. Global Friends has run fundraising expeditions before — trips where climbers ascend through Kilimanjaro's seven climate zones to the summit, with funds raised going toward changing the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children. Dream Kilimanjaro 2026 continues that tradition, now built in direct partnership with a Tanzanian-based operator on the ground.

Before founding Resilience Expeditions, Godwin Nyerere was on the receiving end of the kind of help Global Friends provides — the scholarships, the mentorship, the doors it opens for kids who'd otherwise have none. That support is a direct reason he was able to build a career in tourism instead of being limited by the circumstances he was born into. Today he runs a KPAP-certified climbing and safari company built on fair treatment of porters and guides. Dream Kilimanjaro 2026 is his way of closing the loop.