Location
  • Rwanda

Program Details

Language
English
Housing
Host Family Hostel

Pricing

Starting Price
500
Price Details
Pre-departure Orientation Guide. Includes detailed travel, safety & cultural information and many tips that will make your trip planning easier.
Detailed Fundraising Guide that will help you raise the funds needed to travel, as well as provide donations to the project.
Apr 09, 2021
Feb 23, 2013
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About Program

Teaching Program
Without a basic education, children have few or no prospects are many drawn to life on the streets in local towns. Some of these children find work on farms or as casual laborers, but this is invariably very low paid and unreliable work. Others resort to petty theft in order to survive. To have good prospects in life, children need good education from an early age and continuing through secondary school or vocational training.

Our program combines teaching small kids in pre-school level and also with other children/youth in secondary level vocational training.

1) Pre-School: The school is providing free care and education for disadvantaged children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Most of the children come from one parent homes, are orphans, or are from child-headed households. There are about 50 children being provided education and also food each day.

This program is currently not being promoted on Go Overseas by its provider. Check with A Broader View Volunteers Corp for the most up-to-date information regarding the status of this program.

Consider your impact: Volunteering abroad can be a rewarding experience for both volunteers and local communities, and at Go Overseas, we believe all volunteers should have the resources to make informed decisions about the type of volunteer project they want to partake in. However, despite best intentions, some organizations offering placements in orphanages may unknowingly place children in danger. You can read about the potential dangers of orphanage volunteering here.

Video and Photos

Classes including constructive play time, and classroom learning reading, writing, shapes, colors, numbers and social harmony. Lessons are taught in Kinyarwanda (language) and children are also taught some basic English (where our volunteers come in handy!) This school operates weekday mornings.

2) Vocational / Secondary: The center offers schooling and boarding facilities for poor and disadvantaged teens and youth in the community. There are dormitories for boys and girls, and typically 80 full time students at any time. Subject focus: Tailoring, mechanics, welding and construction. As well as vocational training, subjects taught include English and French lessons, and social education (HIV/AIDS and other health issues, hygiene and nutrition) Volunteers would focus on improving English of the students (16-21yrs old) through assisting with or teaching the English syllabus.

Volunteers are needed to lead classes, or assist the teachers in the class room. Volunteers can focus on individual children, or small groups to provide special attention and added support particularly in English lessons. Volunteers may also help develop skills of teaching staff in English language and computing.

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Program Reviews

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Default avatar
Sarah
5/5
Yes, I recommend this program

My Other Home

I highly recommend this program to everyone. Rwanda in itself is the most beautiful country I can imagine, both in terms of landscaping and most of all, the people. Innocent, the on-site coordinator for this project, met me at the airport and immediately made me feel extremely welcomed. All of the leaders of this program are caring, respectful, fun, and kind. I still keep in touch with everyone I met in Rwanda, and consider them dear friends for life. I am even currently looking into returning after I graduate in May so that I may help run the school. Whether or not this happens, it is a testimony to how much this experience impacted my life.

On an average day I would wake up to the sound of children laughing and sun streaming through my window. After some morning porridge and listening to the Rwandan national anthem at morning assemble, my teaching day would begin. The school day was very long, from about 7:30 am to 5 pm, but there was a break for morning tea and a two hour lunch break so this helped greatly. I taught English, Reading and Writing, and Mathematics to some beautiful (and sometimes naughty!) first and second graders. The children are eager to learn and value education greatly, and this made every moment rewarding. During my lunch break I would catch up on grading or lesson planning, enjoy the company of the other teachers, or play with the children outdoors. Then back to teaching until evening assemble when the majority of the children go home, except for about a dozen boarding students. At this point, it was time for fetching some water, my favorite part of the day. I would grab my jerry cans and make the breath taking walk down to the watering hole, the social gathering place, as the sun was setting golden in the sky. Then I took a little personal time before supper, which was eaten around 7 or 8 pm. After supper pretty much everyone goes to bed because it is dark outside and we must wake up early the next day. On weekends, I usually went into Rwamagana, the nearest town, and went to some internet cafes to email friends or go to the market to buy food and socialize. Within two weeks of being in Rwanda, I couldn't go anywhere without running into someone I knew. Even the language barrier didn't prevent friendships, partly because many people know a little English, and partly because I knew a little Kinyarwanda.

As a side note for people worried about safety, I never felt even a little unsafe in this country. I walked around by myself and talked to total strangers all the time and didn't bother taking my malaria pills after the first week seeing like one mosquito the whole time I was there. Not everyone will feel exactly like I do, and I am not suggesting that anyone not take health or safety precautions, but I would say just don't let any kind of safety factor deter you from visiting Rwanda.

What would you improve about this program?
It was sometimes difficult to teach with so few resources. I did not realize at the time that I went that this elementary school did not even have something like crayons. I'm saying this because I wish I would have known so that I could have brought more resources with me. I also found it frustrating to just jump into teaching students without knowing what they had previously studied. Overall, I felt unprepared and that I could have been more effective in my time there had I been more briefed about the situation I was going into.
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