Early Childhood Development Project in rural communities in South Africa

Created in 2016, our Rise Creche is for the most vulnerable children (many from broken families) who's parents could not afford school fees. These 66 children for 2024 (from a few months old to 5/6 years old) come to the preschool daily for three meals and developmental learning.
The Rise Creche program focuses on Early Childhood Development, through play based learning specialized on Sensory integration and using GROW learning programs.
For us, Early Childhood Development is the best way to grow a better tomorrow!
Volunteers involved in the program will assist in daily tasks' classroom assistance and playground based learning activities.
From 7:30am to 3pm with,
- Helping our staff to be ready for the day
- Classroom assistance
- Supervising the activities with the kids
- Playing with the kids
- Outreach assistance

Volunteers will stay at a Backpackers situated on the same property. You will spend your day working with the team, learning from them and having an amazing experience! Some days you will also accompany the Rise Creche Coordinator to outreach visits to other preschools we support. The work is very hand-on, so expect to be busy but remember to have fun!

We believe that conservation and communities cannot exist in isolation of each other - hence our goals through all our projects to interlink, grow, conserve and uplift. The holism of our programs is important as it works with the community as a whole to see the problems in a bigger picture.

Our programming focuses are Education, Enterprise and Tourism.

We have a programming structure as follows:

- Green Kidz (our environmental education programme - We support 11 elementary-schools around the area)
- Social Enterprise, where we support and grow small businesses through an incubator
- Agro-Ecology training, very similar to permaculture, but more suited to African conditions
- Rise creches (Our Early Childhood Development programme. We support 6 pre-schools around the area)
- Eco Village (this includes our recycling programme and our general day to day outreach into the village around us).

You will be immersed into the project as one of the team members to engage in the planning and running of the programs. You can combine our projects during your time with us or focusing on one (your choice). You will have the opportunity to explore our amazing area during the weekend (extra cost - We can organize it!)

We can't wait to have you join our Family!