Friends and supporters of Precious Project, a Tanzanian education organization with ties to the Vineyard, gathered Thursday night in West Tisbury to celebrate the project’s accomplishments, including a prestigious national award.

Earlier this year, the Tanzanian government awarded the Precious Project with the Uhuru Torch, an annual honor presented to organizations and individuals who make significant contributions to socio-economic progress in the African country.

On Thursday, dozens gathered at the home of Dr. Elliot Kronstein to recognize the ongoing work, fundraise and learn about the nonprofit's mission.

Laury Binney holds up his award. — Ray Ewing

The project was founded in Nshupu, a village in rural Tanzania, by locals William and Sarah Modest. In 2009, the pair started a small orphanage for nine children, and classes for  pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.

In the years since, the program has grown into a home for 29 children, along with an elementary and secondary school for about 1,100 students combined.

Susie Rheault and Gil Williams of Oak Bluffs and Mr. Kronstein and May Baldwin of West Tisbury have been involved in the project since its early days and regularly travel to the project’s campus in East Africa.

In 2011, Ms. Rheault and Mr. Williams had been looking to get involved in a project where their skills could be useful. They discovered the project together on a trip to Africa, where Ms. Rheault had been working for the Clinton Foundation.

“We truly stumbled upon it,” Ms. Rheault said at the event. “We walked in, and we knew we had found what that project would be.”

At the time, the project was housed in a small concrete building and struggling to feed or supply basic needs to the children living there, they said. The pair founded the U.S. branch of the organization together with a focus on supporting the project’s Tanzanian leaders, they said.

Mr. Kronstein, the president of the project’s board, said that he and his wife joined the nonprofit soon after traveling to Africa with Ms. Rheault and Mr. Williams.

“It felt like a place where we could make a difference,” he said. “We all agreed that it was education that would help break this cycle of poverty.”

The project’s U.S. team advises and raises both awareness and funds to support the operations of the Precious schools, aiming to enable its Tanzanian founders to run the best school they can and expand its impact, Rachael Harris, the project’s director of operations, said.

Ms. Harris joined the project in 2015 and said it has grown immensely since.

“We started with about a $100,000 budget that year, and now it’s more than $1 million,” she said.

Precious Project runs a home for children in Tanzania and two schools. — Ray Ewing

The first few of the original nine children from the orphanage graduated secondary school this year and are heading to university, Ms. Rheault’s step-son Matt Gardner said.

“It's kind of mind-blowing, but it also means that we're doing something right,” he said.

The Tanzanian government agreed, and the project received 2023’s Uhuru Torch for the progress it has made in the education field.

The national award wasn’t the only thing being celebrated Thursday, though.

The nonprofit named Rehema David Akyoo, the school’s social worker, Tanzanian staff member of the year at the event. She was not in attendance and Mr. Williams said he and Ms. Rheault will bring the award with her next time they travel to Tanzania.

“She provides case management counseling to over 750 students,” Mr. Williams said. “I was a principal of a high school, and we had a social worker… There's not a caseload like that that I've ever heard of.”

Mr. Williams also named Laury Binney, one of the project’s American volunteers and a former principal of the Oak Bluffs School, the volunteer of the year. Mr. Binney has traveled to Tanzania with Precious Project to advise teachers and administrators, Mr. Williams said.

“What he's doing is remarkable because he's teaching teachers how to be better teachers and administrators to be better administrators,” Mr. Williams said of Mr. Binney. “And it shows by the results we're getting. Out of Tanzanian schools, Precious schools are in the top 1 percentile academically.”

With the help and hard work of people like Ms. Akyoo and Mr. Binney, Precious Project is improving economic self-sufficiency and gender equity in rural Tanzania, where girls face more barriers in getting an education, Mr. Williams said, adding that the student body is roughly half boys and half girls.

The project also focuses on educating these children so that they can go back and improve their own communities instead of leaving the region or continent, Mr. Williams said.

The U.S. team of the Precious Project said it hopes the school will become financially self-sustaining eventually, but for now it relies on fundraising.

By the end of Thursday's celebration, six of the students had been sponsored and $45,000 dollars had been raised, Jennifer Wysocki, the project’s development director, said, adding that the project is still hoping to secure sponsorships for seven more children.

“[Precious Project has] exceeded everyone’s expectations, goals, dreams, hopes,” Mr. Kronstein said. “We’re basking in this moment, knowing there is more to do.”