Volunteer English-Teaching Program

Project At A Glance

Location: Kampala Start Point: Entebbe International Airport , Entebbe End Point: Entebbe International Airport , Entebbe Duration: 2-12 Weeks Hours: 20-30 Hours per week Food: Local meals 3 times a day Room: Host family or hostel Date: First and Third Monday of each month

Project Summary

Opportunities exist for those with strong English skills. In Uganda , income levels determine your children's quality of schooling. This creates a large gap amongst student's education. Most upper-class children receive ideal English instruction, but children of poorer families and communities lag far behind. This educational gap grows as children progress through their schooling and eventually into the workforce. Our programs to volunteer English teaching in Uganda benefit local children and orphans by helping them develop useful English language skills. The demand for English-speaking Ugandans is becoming more prominent as the tourist industry grows. Improving these children's conversational English in Uganda makes for a better future and also prepares them to compete and participate in the global market.

Skill/Qualification Needed

There are no specific qualifications required to join this English-teaching project. However, IFRE does prefer participants to be enthusiastic native English-speakers who are eager to teach children. Previous teaching experience and/or a degree in English is preferred but not required.

Volunteer Responsibilities

As a volunteer English-teacher, you teach for about 2-3 hours a day, six days a week. There are English teachers and a set curriculum in place in the Ugandan schools; however, volunteers offer much-needed support to this overworked staff in the way of introducing and applying different teaching methods, suggesting resolutions for communication barriers and providing appropriate curriculum ideas for the classroom.

Responsibilities include teaching English in either primary or secondary schools. Additionally, you may teach in one of the local orphanages which run their own schools and utilize volunteers to offer English instruction. Local schools provide all curriculum and teaching materials. Volunteers will work alongside an already-existing teacher – reporting to the schools' respective headmasters.

Room/Food/Supervision

IFRE manages living accommodations, provides meals and supervision for volunteers for the entirety of their stay in Uganda . We offer a Home Base in Uganda . IFRE's Uganda home base is located in a Kampala . We try to create a “home away from home” for volunteers staying at our home base. It is a perfect situation for volunteers to live safely and comfortably while making many new friends and sharing experience every day. Most of volunteers project in Uganda are located within 1-20 KM of our home base so you may walk or ride a local bus to your project. In the evening when you return to home base, you can relax, eat dinner, explore local areas or simply share experience with volunteer comrades.

Occasionally, depending on volunteer traffic, available projects or distance to a volunteer's assigned project, we may also place our volunteers with carefully pre-screened host families. Our host families are socially respected and are experienced with hosting international volunteers. They have strong interest in our volunteers' safety and well being and demonstrate this with caution and care. In most host family situations, volunteers will share a room with another volunteer of the same gender. Another viable option is an at-orphanage stay. Volunteers participating in the orphanage project may reside within the confines of the orphanage's compound in a room set aside for volunteers. Once you have applied for program placement, you will find the specific details of your accommodations in your personal placement documents for your project. Our field staff visits volunteers regularly and always happy to help our volunteers in any way needed. We offer 3 meals a day of local cuisine. Typically, volunteers eat breakfast and dinner at the home base (or host family) and have lunch at their project. We offer fresh, nutritious and safe local foods to our volunteers to eat. We also work extremely hard to maintain our facilities in a positive condition.