Health Services Development Program could only be achieved by the contribution of public--private partnerships. In Tanzania, these partnerships are mostly provided by faith-based organisations (FBOs). In 2008, the Tanzanian government issued the following statement: 'The Government of Tanzania is promoting the concept of Public Private Partnership (PPP) in which the Government through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare provides grants in aid to the Faith-based Organisations according to the contract service agreements dependent on the number of hospital beds. Similarly, the government provides aid grants to the training institutions according to the school student capacity as per training agreements' ([@CIT0003]).

The United Nations Populations Fund defines FBOs 'as Faith-based or faith-inspired non-governmental organisations, with legal standing, which are working to advocate for, or deliver development and humanitarian servicesinternational non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have made many contributions to the health and development needs of low-income countries. 'They have brokered funding, established programmes, conducted research and helped deliver services on an enormous scale'. However, the role of NGOs is changing, and there is a trend away 'from managing service delivery programmes to providing more technical assistance' ([@CIT0012]: 915).

The focus of this paper is on an FBO-run nurse training school. In 2007, a hospital management team and I, an international health professional and researcher, started to set up a new nursing school attached to an old 'mission hospital' in rural Tanzania. Initially, this meant conceiving the idea with local partners, planning it, finding funding, and obtaining the necessary official permissions. The trigger to start was a meeting with the