Work In a Day Care Center in South Africa

Project At A Glance

Locations: Cape Town Start point: Cape Town End point: Cape Town Duration: 2-12 weeks Hours: 30-40 hours per week Food: Local meals (3 times a day) Room: Host family or hostel Date: First and Third Wednesday of each month

Project Summary

IFRE supports many day care centers throughout Cape Town which were developed to provide day care options for underprivileged families and working mothers. Volunteers will be helping them to feed the children, keep the children clean, supervise napping and play with them. English-speaking volunteers may opt to teach the youngsters English while they are at the centers.

Skills/Qualifications Needed

There are no specific qualifications needed to join IFRE's day care project in South Africa. However, volunteers are expected to be flexible and patient, as well as possess a passion and love for children. Volunteers should be enthusiastic about caring for others and empathetic to the often unfortunate situations of these children

Volunteer Responsibilities

Volunteers in may support these various activities and more:

• Supporting recreational and artistic activities with an objective of educational learning.
  
• Helping children work in the garden.
  
• Organizing and developing sports activities.
  
• Supporting in the kitchen/helping to serve lunch in the dining room.
  
• Helping children with homework and teaching basic conversational English
  
• Assisting with location-specific duties – routine maintenance, construction, etc

Note: In South Africa, many of our volunteer projects are based in rural communities, sometime located a great distance from the city limits of Cape Town. In each local community, we support multiple projects such as orphanages, schools, HIV/AIDS project, hospital etc. Volunteers will help or participate in more than one project during their experience. This multi-tasking presents a more varied volunteering experience and the extra help is greatly appreciated by the community.

Room/Food/Supervision

IFRE arranges accommodations and food (3 local meals/day) for the duration of your volunteer project. During orientation and training program, volunteers stay in our hostel in Cape Town. Our hostel is located in the heart of the city giving volunteers easy access to all parts of the city. Volunteers stay with a host family (aka “homestay”) during the volunteer program. Our host families are socially respected and are well versed in the art of hosting international volunteers. Host families offer a safe home, private rooms (occasionally rooms will be shared with other same-gender volunteers) and shared bathroom facilities with running water.

Volunteers will receive three meals of South African cuisine each day. Breakfast normally consists of cereal and toast; lunch is packed to take to your project and dinner is a nutritious home cooked local meal (meat & vegetables, rice or potatoes & salad). Host families provide typical meals that are traditional to South Africa.. Throughout the volunteer project, our local staff stays in contact with volunteers with either face-to-face visits or via email/telephone. IFRE’s main office is in Cape Town and our in-country coordinator serves as a point of contact for local volunteers. If project placement is very far from our main office, then our local staff members maintain communication by email and/or phone and the local project director will serve as a volunteer’s contact. Upon program placement, personal placement documents provide specific details of accommodations and project.