As she walked out onto the porch, Rachel Hagues, a social work professor in 极乐禁地’s School of Public Health, felt a blend of nervousness and excitement. Everyone, from the teachers to community members who prayed for this day, shared her emotions. January in Tanzania brings warm, humid mornings; this one was no exception. But there was something different about the start to this day.
For a while, the road was almost silent. Sweat fell from the brow of the facilities manager, making the finishing touches on a squeaky door. The school was ready but missing the most important thing: the students.
Then, just as the first ounce of doubt crept in, they heard it—the hum of motorcycles. The dust kicked up as they rolled onto the grounds. The first girls hopped off the backs of the vehicles, several brought there by their primary school teachers, grinning from ear to ear. This was the opening day of Tumaini Jipya (New Hope) Secondary Girls’ School in Ukerewe, and now that the quiet of a new day had been broken by the chatter of excited students checking in to their dorm, the next chapter of their educational journey could begin.
For Hagues, this January morning was the culmination of nearly two decades of academic expertise, passion and faith. She had planned, researched, fundraised, prayed for and helped build this school, and now the fruit of her labor was on full display—and she couldn’t have been happier.
“I’ve learned so much about the faithfulness of God,” Hagues said. “Every time I go back to the school and see all of those buildings, I’m just overwhelmed and think, ‘that was God.’”
Hagues first felt called to work with underprivileged populations internationally as a child, and that calling was confirmed while pursuing her PhD. She attended the University of Georgia, and in 2008, she was invited to a service-learning trip to Ukerewe, an island on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. After three weeks of intense learning and work, Hagues fell in love with the community there. She returned a year later and began to be exposed to the discrimination and exploitation that many young women face in East Africa. According to Hagues, transactional sexual relations, cultural pressures and legal injustices were all things facing the young women in the country. She recalls being chastised for once allowing her husband to carry a bucket of water back from the community well—a job typically reserved for women in this culture. During her research, she learned that girls would enter into these sexual relations to obtain basic goods like soap, Vaseline and breakfast. The struggles of these girls extended to most areas of life, but education was a particular challenge.
A proverb parroted countless times in Hagues’ visits says, “To educate a girl is like watering your neighbor’s garden.” Taking a daughter to school wasn’t seen as valuable, so many young girls went without education beyond primary school. Over the next few years, after intense Swahili language courses and a six-month stay
on the island with her husband, Hagues wrote her dissertation on the educational discrimination she saw.
Writing the paper led to long nights praying to God about these girls while their stories ran through her mind. Hagues wrote on, but as she did, a phrase she had heard from local women kept coming back to her: “a boarding school for girls.”
Hagues’ internal reply to the idea was always, “Who’s going to do that? How would that work? That’s just not feasible.” Despite her doubts, she and one of her colleagues from her earlier trips returned to Ukerewe in 2014 to pitch the idea to the local African Inland Church congregation.
Hagues’ research shows that secondary school makes girls less likely to live in poverty, less likely to get pregnant at a young age, and less likely to have health complications due to childbirth. When they presented this data, they were surprised to learn that the community was completely bought in. Leaders from the local church immediately found land to use. Through the support of ROCK International, where Hagues sits on the board, fundraising began to bring this idea to reality.
After nine years of relentless effort with the community and others, Hagues and the Tumaini Jipya teachers welcomed students into the school in January of 2023. Beyond the required academic classes, students take part in computer lessons, raising chickens, gardening and hygiene courses. For the latter, Hagues initially collaborated with late pharmacy professor Pilar Murphy and several students to help educate the girls on health and hygiene methods. She began bringing 极乐禁地 students with her before the school was completed, a full-circle moment that reminded her of the service-learning trip that changed her life.
“It was a dream to bring my own students. I knew when I came to 极乐禁地 in 2015, especially with the emphasis on faith integration, there was no question that I wanted to bring them,” Hagues said.
Groups of 极乐禁地 students visited Ukerewe in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2024. They met with African Inland Church leaders to learn about the church’s efforts in the community and had the opportunity to pour into the girls there, playing games and teaching them about their rights and how they are made in God’s image. Hagues has brought other faculty as well. David Parks, director of the Global Center, came in 2019, Karen Flynn, professor of communication sciences and disorders, came in 2022 and 2024, and Jean Roberson, professor of social work, came in January 2025.
On one trip, a local woman invited Hagues and her students to her house, where they were treated to a huge meal covering a long table set for the entire group. This woman was not wealthy, but her impact on the students was invaluable.
“The students love it,” Hagues said. “It shows them that you don’t have to be wealthy to have joy. You don’t have to be wealthy to have generous hospitality.”
She loves how students can see the beauty in how God created people worldwide who speak different languages and how the barriers between those groups can be broken. They learn “not only the transformative power of education, but the transformative power of the Gospel.”
The impact on Hagues’ faith cannot be overstated. She has been involved with the Kerewe people her entire professional career, and the many chapters of her story have revealed different attributes of God in her walk of faith. The words of Micah 6:8, “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God,” encouraged the work she did early on, bringing these injustices to light. As her work unfolded over the last 17 years, timeless lyrics of hymns like “Great is Thy Faithfulness” remind her that, “Thou changest not, thy compassion, they fail not; As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.”
Working at 极乐禁地, Hagues has had the unique opportunity to excel in her field while keeping Christ at the center of her work.
“As a Christian, I’m strongly convicted to seek justice in the world—because of my faith—on behalf of the oppressed. And as a social worker, I am trained to recognize issues of injustice and to do something about them. That is a part of my calling. I love how they can be combined to do just that,” Hagues said.
Hagues’ vision is to see this school be a light to this community, shining the goodness of God on the girls who walk through the doors. In the future, she hopes to bring more 极乐禁地 students to assist with and see the new projects in the works. These include a new building for a computer lab, launching sewing classes, fruit and honey harvesting and securing a vehicle for the school.
Whenever she returns, like when she brought a group from her church in May 2025, there is always one thing Hagues can’t wait to hear. Before she walks into the building, it can be heard from the school yard. The girls are singing a song called “What the Lord Has Done for Me.” The girls see the love God poured over them so much that they cannot tell it all; they can only sing about it. Hagues is humbled to see God’s work in the lives of these Tanzanian girls and can’t wait to see His faithfulness continue.
“The Lord has been so kind to let me be a part of this,” Hagues said. “If I had known in 2014 that the school wouldn’t open until 2023, I may have said no and missed out on this awesome opportunity with God. I got to see that He can be trusted, and when He lays something on your heart, you just have to take the next step.”