Teaching at the Glory of Africa Orphanage

Hi!

I’m Lily and am a Social Media and Marketing intern at Art in Tanzania!

I accompanied one of my fellow interns, Michiel – a volunteer from Holland, to the Glory of Africa Orphanage located about 30 minutes from the Dar es Salaam compound. As part of his project, Michiel is teaching English to children of various ages ranging from 4 to 14 years old and I was able to go along to document what happens on a typical day.

First things first, let me give you a bit of an insight into what the Glory of Africa Orphanage is all about. Founded in 2012, Glory of Africa currently houses 8 children with many more in the neighbourhood coming every day for education and food which is made available through donations. Art in Tanzania’s interns and volunteers have been working with Glory of Africa since 2013 by creating different projects as a means of support. ‘The Glory Water Pipeline’ is an example of a clean water and sanitation project that was created in 2013 whereby volunteers raised money and donated a water tank to the orphanage. There is a classroom within the compound where you can find a blackboard, chalk, rows of desks and a cupboard filled with pencils and paper. All this is to ensure that the children have equipment for the lessons that take place and to provide a classroom environment.

Michiel usually visits the orphanage in the afternoon around 4pm after the children have finished their daily school routines, therefore lessons are a sort of after school activity for the children typically lasting between one and two hours. In previous weeks, the children have been learning the basics of English with one particular lesson focusing on various animals and the translation of these animals from Kiswahili to English. By the end of the lesson the children were able to successfully communicate in English what their favourite animal is and why! I went along with Michiel on his 4th visit to the orphanage. The lesson started off with a recap of the previous days teachings, which consisted of verbs, and then moved on to focus on different grammatical terms. This lesson had particular focus on nouns and identifying the nouns within in a sentence. Different sentences were written in English on the blackboard and the children were asked to come up to the front and underline the noun in each sentence, all correctly identifying the noun. From starting with simple English words to teaching various grammatical terms, their knowledge and understanding of English is coming along swimmingly as Michiel moves on to teaching more advanced topics aiming to introduce Human Rights perhaps to some of the older children.

With everything learned and the lesson over, it was time for some games! Football seems to be a loved sport in Tanzania, and the orphanage was no different…

Two footballs were given to the children and, joined my Michiel, they rushed out the door to have a kick about outside.The orphanage has a big open space where the children can play and run about between and after lessons. Everyone got involved in the game and the children looked extremely happy and full of energy; it was a great chance for them to get out and be active after learning. We ended up staying for around an hour and a half after the lesson playing and talking to the children which was a great way to get to know more about them outside of the classroom!

Taking the opportunity to volunteer by teaching English is a fantastic opportunity and what better way than to volunteer with Art in Tanzania and support local organisations such as the Glory of Africa Orphanage. With their desire to learn, teaching and getting to know these children seems so rewarding; being able to play games with them is a bonus too!

If you would like to take part in a project like this or for other volunteering opportunities, visit our website for more details!