Terra Education

Although we are an American organization, our roots are global. In 2003, Peter Mombaur, Fred Swaniker and Chris Bradford envisioned creating the African Leadership Academy, a school to develop future leaders of Africa, regardless of income. Fred Swaniker, a Stanford MBA who is originally from Ghana who grew up all over Africa, realized that the greatest obstacle to African development was leadership. In an effort to combat this problem, they began developing a pan-African high school which would offer a world-class education and promote ethical and principled leadership among top high school students from all over the continent.  As a way to develop the curriculum, they created a summer program called the Summer Academy at Cape Town.  

At this point, Fred decided to focus all his energy on creating this new high school. Peter Mombaur was so inspired by his experience with the Summer Academy that he and Andrew Motiwalla established Terra Education in the United States to connect American students with educational leadership programs. Today, Terra Education is a leading educational travel agency.

Our mission is to inspire people to realize their potential to transform the world through
high quality educational programming.

These are our guiding principles to achieve the mission.

Compassion This drives our work and it applies to our travelers, staff, and host communities. Our care for people extends to everything we do.

Cultural sensitivity We recognize, appreciate and embrace cultures other than our own; and we strive to facilitate deep understanding of other cultures between our staff, communities and travelers.

Innovation It makes us stand out in international education and travel. Open to new ideas and always striving to work better and smarter to serve our communities, travelers, and staff.

Integrity It is the unfailing framework from which we build every program, human relationship, and bridge into a community.