Orphan And Teaching Project, Kenya Detail
Orphan And Teaching Project, Kenya
Pricing: 2012 2 Weeks GBP745 / EUR970 / USD1340
4 Weeks GBP1195 / EUR1555 / USD2145
6 Weeks GBP1595 / EUR2075 / USD2870
8 Weeks GBP1995 / EUR2595 / USD3595
**10% Discount for any volunteers who book now to join this project starting in March 2012! **
Find out what it's really like to volunteer in Kenya with us, read Lydia's blog live from the project here.
The Projects
As an orphan and teaching volunteer you will spend 4 of the five week days at one of our 7 schools. During your four days at the school you will generally divide your day into teaching in the morning and practical and resource development work in the afternoon (the major development work in the schools is done over the school holiday months of April, August and December). Alternate Fridays will be community days where you will help a local project with practical needs (such as a feeding programme) or have a fun day. Every other Friday is used for fundraising for the community day.
The establishments you will be involved in are divided into 3 categories:
Orphanages / Pre-schools in Limuru
Primary Schools
Special Education schools
In order to ensure continuity and consistency for both the children, schools/orphanages and volunteers, each volunteer will be placed at one institution alongside one teacher for your entire duration in Kenya. You will be placed at the school for four days a week with the exception of a Friday where there will be community days where you will help a local project with practical needs (such as a feeding programme) or have a fun day. Every other Friday is used for fundraising for the community day.
Orphanages / Pre-schools in Limuru
There are over a million orphans in Kenya mainly due to AIDS, of which only 5 % get any kind of support. There is a huge need for assisting orphanages and children's homes. There are several orphanages in Limuru that we are involved with. These children come from backgrounds that have been affected by HIV/AIDS, abuse, poverty or illness. These children are in need of love and attention. Many of them are developmentally delayed and need extra attention in order to promote their development. The children's ages range mainly between 4 and 15 years.
The orphanages offer opportunities to become involved in:
• Helping with the teaching of the children and helping to develop better learning materials and lesson plans.
• General care such as cooking for the children's meals or organizing sports and play activities to promote the well being of the children.
• Assisting orphanage workers in offering moral support and guidance to the children, training of basic life skills and any activities for various rehabilitative programmes in the orphanages.
• Building/improving the facilities to make it feel more like home for the children: by painting pictures on the walls etc. Some of the orphanages we partner with are building to expand and improve their facilities and your pair of hands will be greatly appreciated in this practical work.
• Creating and teaching the children various arts and sport activities that make creative use of their time and hone their hidden skills and talents!
The children are very energetic and will gladly challenge you to a game of basketball or soccer. You will have a chance to make a huge impact on these children's lives by spending time with them, and contributing to their learning and development.
In the class
You will be assigned to one class and will provide assistance to your teacher you are linked up with. While the teacher is in front of the classroom, teaching a class, it is extremely valuable to have a teaching assistant who can go round and help individual children with their assignments. Since classes are usually very large, the pupils do not often get the individual attention they require, so any extra support and attention the child is able to get the better.
Please see below how you will be able to assist on this project:
Marking tests and assignments - Due to severe lack of resource such as text books or even photo coping machine. Teachers often have to write homework assignments out mark all of them. Due to this volume of work teachers often have very little time to properly correct work
Educational enhancement - As mentioned before, the education system in Kenya has a strong focus on literacy and numeracy. The general teaching style encourages rote learning which requires little understanding and comprehension but merely the ability to memorize and repeat back. By closely and alongside the teacher we aim to assist in developing a resource file filled with lesson plans and creative ideas to promote, consolidate and inspire learning which concepts are fully grasped.
Teaching - When volunteers, have spent enough time observing in the classroom, working with the children and teacher and are comfortable with taking a lesson or a section of work they will be able to do this under the guidance of the teacher.
Not Replacements - We emphasize with both teacher and volunteer the role of African impact is to enhance the educational environment and learning experience through assistance and support and not merely relieving the work load. The question we always ask when the volunteers leaves is “will you be leaving behind a different work style, attitude, motivation or will you be taking it all back with you again. The only way we can achieve this is through “working with” and not “working for” staff.
Group Work - A volunteer may find in a class that there are groups of children who struggle to keep up with the rest of the class. Volunteers will take groups of children out of the class to go through the class work at a slower rate with greater repetition to enhance learning.
Reading club - In the afternoons volunteers run take some time with small groups to run a reading club to develop the children literacy skills. As a volunteer armed with your box of books, you will arrive at school and help give the children the extra support they need. You do this by helping with difficult words, encouraging them as they read and offering the opportunity to practice their literacy skills outside the limits of the lesson available.
Revision Classes - Since the pace of the class is often fast, and the individual attention is low, it is easy for some children to fall behind. By repeating the subjects in revision classes, these children might have a better chance of keeping up in the future during their regular classes.
Holiday program - Holiday club is extremely important as it offers students valuable time to catch up on learning. It also gives young people a safe environment to spend their holidays, having fun and providing additional education.
Green club - With no refuse services, no sanitation facilities and little opportunity for adequate hygiene, children are often not taught to necessary self care or the responsibility to keep themselves or their environment clean. Thus with the green we aim to teach children about hygiene and keeping ones environment clean. We would like to involve more community members and parents and create a community mobilization for the community itself to take more responsibly for their environment and put in their own structure even when no one else will.
Arts and Sport Activities - You will find that there are very limited resources geared towards extracurricular activities which do add value in stimulating child development. It would be of great help to both the teachers and children to come up with interesting activities, using locally available materials. You would be surprised how a little creativity can go a long way in creating fun activities for physical education, music, drama, poetry, drawing, painting and lots more!
Boundaries - We feel it is very important for volunteers to set appropriate boundaries from the very beginning with the children. We want our volunteers to have fun, but there also needs to be a certain degree of order within the classroom. You’re there to help after all, not to make the teacher’s job more difficult by disrupting the class.
Special Education
A new partnership with a boarding school for children with a range of intellectual impairments was initiated in September of 2009. The School has needed much assistance, support and development. When we arrived there were 26 boys sleeping on 7 mattresses. Each child now has their own bed and volunteers are now focusing on assisting and training staff in implementing a daily structure which caters for each child’s needs and functional abilities. A lot of help is also needed in teaching the children how to accomplish basic tasks on their own, with lots of patience.
SCHOOL TERMS 2012
1st Term: 9th January – 4th April
2nd Term: 2nd May – 1st August
3rd Term: 5th Sep – 28th November
