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Education
Kenyan Early Childhood Education Program (KECEP)
Location: based in Nairobi and Ngong with travel to outlying communities
Suitable for: anyone but preferably someone with a background in education or community social work
Date constraints: nil
Selection: subject to application and interview
The Kenyan Early Childhood Education Program (KECEP) is a program targeted at bringing the benefits of a dedicated early childhood education program to underprivileged villages. Even where rural children are able to access the nominally universal free primary school education in Kenya, they inevitably start at the age of seven and are already at a disadvantage compared to their kindergarten-educated counterparts in urban areas and other parts of the world. This program aims to implement early childhood education through adapting Kenyan early childhood education curricula and adapting them to rural social and cultural contexts.
Volunteers are essential at this stage of the program in facilitating communication between the program organisers and the target communities and the communities surrounding them. With assistance, volunteers will act as intermediaries who visit communities, meeting senior village people and explaining the importance and value of the program for their people.
Volunteers are also required in order to take part in feeding back research to the development program in Melbourne. Volunteers are needed to observe children in Maasai communities and assess current activities which improve cognitive and logistical ability in order to map these out. This is important in adding cultural integration into the new curricula by attempting integration of existing cultural components.
Finally, the volunteers are important in creating external profiling of communities, making links and exposing communities to the idea of new educational concepts.
While this role is open to anyone, this role requires motivated individuals who are able to take the initiative and are able to quickly adapt their approach to be culturally sensitive. Volunteers would be appropriately supported by program development members both in Australia and in Kenya.
The KECEP program is in partnership with Early Childhood Education at the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education as well as UNICEF and the Aga Khan Foundation’s educational programs. It is currently seeking backing from the University of Melbourne Dreamlarge Knowledge Transfer Scheme.
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