Project Life
Volunteer on Childcare Projects in Nicaragua

Volunteers work in La Thompson from Monday to Friday. You begin the day eating breakfast with your host family before meeting up with the other volunteers 7.30am, to leave Esteli on the bus at 7.50am. After arriving at the school at 8.20am, classes commence until 10am, at which point there is a mid-morning break when we give out fruit to the children as a snack. Classes then resume at 10.30am until around midday, when we clean up the school and make our way back to Esteli for around 12.30pm. After lunch, you then plan classes for the next day at the GVI house at 3.00pm until 4.30pm. Some afternoons a week we will probably stay up to give adult literacy classes and further reinforcement.

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Volunteers have the option to take their own class, or assist other volunteers or GVI staff until they feel they could take their own class. It is hoped that a new volunteer will work with an experienced volunteer for one to two weeks with the aim to take over that class once the experienced volunteer has left. Each class size can range from 10-20 children, depending on the collective ability or the attention needed by the children. Lessons range from basic literacy and numbers to educational reinforcement, help with homework, some English, games, sports and other activities.

We aim to help those children who are struggling in their classes, and also to take the classes which don’t have a teacher. Rural schools tend to have one or two teachers for all grades, thus the teacher is only able to give his/her attention to one class at a time. We aim to have all classes with a teacher. We will also take smaller groups of children to allow more attention for them to learn and to allow the teacher to continue with his/her class. It is hoped that with more personal reinforcement, the child will learn quicker and be able to adapt better to the classes being given by the local teacher.

One of our initiatives is to introduce, fund and run ‘aulas abiertas’ (open classrooms) in the afternoons, whereby children, teenagers and adults can come on a regular basis to receive reinforcement, additional education or in most cases, first time education. We provide all the necessary utensils for the ‘students’ and these lessons will include basic literacy, maths and English.

No formal teacher-training is required as each volunteer will be supported by GVI project managers and staff or existing volunteers for the first few days. Teaching manuals, resource books, the Nicaraguan curriculum and many other teacher resource books are available for the volunteers’ use. A daily meeting is held to discuss structure, swap ideas and to work on the following day’s classes.