Ashley Holmer is Founding Executive Director of Red Sweater Project, a nonprofit that provides educational opportunities for rural Tanzanian students, and CEO of Red Rhino Tours. Holmer's international development and business models emphasize community involvement and investment, local leadership, and sustainability.

In 2005, Holmer moved to Tanzania to work as an English teacher and soccer coach in a Maasai village. Toward the end of her year-long post, leaders of a nearby village offered 20 acres of donated land on which to build the community’s first secondary school. Over the next thirteen years, Holmer opened two secondary schools in rural areas of the country, enrolling over 400 students each school year, half of whom are already on their way to studying at the university level. She serves as a tireless advocate for girls’ education in Tanzania and around the world.

Fluent in the local language of Swahili, Holmer continues to live part-time among the Maasai. Red Sweater Project has become a model for other development programs, seeking to create partnerships that honor tradition and local leadership and encouraging sustainability.
A Michigan native, Holmer moved to Oregon as a teenager, where she became a founding member of the state's first chapter of the National Charity League. She received her degree in Psychology from Willamette University in 2002, while serving as the Chapter Advisor of her philanthropic sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. In 2012, she received the University’s “You’re Doing WHAT with Your Degree?” Award, honoring the accomplishments of Red Sweater Project. She was also recently inducted into Willamette’s Athletic Hall of Fame for Women’s Soccer and is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Citation.

She’s been featured on the international news source Voice of America, written about in Strong Sensitive Souls, and has garnered the support of the Portland Timbers Football Club of Major League Soccer (MLS).

Ashley can be reached at ashley@redsweaterproject.org.

About the Red Sweater Project

Red Sweater Project is a non-profit organization that collaborates with developing communities in rural Tanzania to create affordable, accessible, and innovative opportunities for secondary education where it currently doesn’t exist for the majority of children. Providing world-class tours to East Africa’s vast renowned wildlife parks, Red Rhino Tours, LLC operates to provide visitors with both a unique view into life in rural Tanzania and as a sustainable solution in support of the organization’s projects.

Despite recent economic growth in Tanzania, the country remains economically depressed, as rural areas continue to suffer from a lack of access to sustainable income-generating opportunities. Only a small fraction of families are able to afford to send their children to public secondary school (U.S. middle and high school equivalent), with private school out of reach for all but the wealthiest families.

Partnering with local leaders, Red Sweater Project adopts a holistic approach to addressing the diverse needs of at-risk children. In 2012, Red Sweater Project broke ground in Mungere Village on the community's first secondary school, which has grown in a few short years to support more than 140 students and families. The school offers basic health services with health-based education, access to safe water and sanitation, sustainably-designed infrastructure and an organic school garden.

Founded by Ashley Holmer in 2011, the organization and investing safari tour company have become a model for other international development programs seeking to create partnerships that honor tradition and local leadership, encourage sustainability, and recognize education as a crucial step in interrupting the cycle of generational poverty. Having lived and worked in Africa since 2005 and fluent in
Swahili, Holmer speaks about life in the land of Serengeti, education in the developing world, the rights of women and girls, and how tribes like the vibrant Maasai and its staunch traditions are heading toward an unknown future.