Sure Starts Children’s Centre – Day-care Education centre

Sure Starts Children’s Centre is a private facility that offers day-care & pre-school education for the regular and kids with special needs aged between 2
– 5 years. The number of the kids is dynamic, last year the centre hosted 28 kids, and 10 staff members. Their curriculum is based on the UK’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and is designed to foster the emotional, physical, social, intellectual and creative development of each child. All classes are taught in English. The school also offers extra curriculum activities for parents, such as trainings and workshops on child protection, first aid, teenagers education, bulling issues and other subjects. In order to help children from poorer backgrounds, the project also runs a charity called Maisha Leo, which provides after school classes such as communication, debate, art, music and language classes for primary government schools. Liz Mleli, who is Managing Director of the project, founded the school in 2012. Main objective & Activities The school’s mission is to nurture every child’s desire to learn experiment, play and gain independence. They believe that children need a safe as well as inspiring atmosphere in which to grow so they can develop their potential to the fullest in life. They also believe that children should have the opportunity to play safely yet at the same time, participate in stimulating activities, which will lay a foundation for their schooling. Sure Starts Children’s centre is a private facility with no assistance from the government. It hosts 16 members of the staff and the fees that the students’ families pay cover their salaries. On the other side, Maisha Leo doesn’t have specific  ources of funding and only 2 members of the staff are working in the charity.

Volunteer’s tasks & roles

Volunteers can assist in a number of areas:
 Supporting the local teachers with English and other subjects;
 Teaching creative disciplines such as arts and crafts, drawing, music, dancing, drama or singing;
 Playing with the children;
 Planning and implementing the extra curriculum activities Maisha Leo organizes, such as debate, art, language or music classes.
Volunteers normally work Mondays to Fridays for no more than 6 hours a day.
Working hours:
 Start time: 8.00 a.m.
 Break time: 12.30 p.m.
 End time: 4.00 p.m.

Why should volunteers choose this project? Sure Starts Children’s Centre is a peaceful and cooperative environment, where the staffs are highly experienced. Differently from most schools in Tanzania, beating the children is not allowed in this project. The main challenge you can expect to face is the workload, as you will always be busy with different daily tasks. In the project, you will be able to learn to teach and to deal with the different personalities of the alumni. You will also experience a proper cultural exchange through the friendships created with the students and the staffs.