At African Impact, our volunteer teaching projects concentrate on four main focuses. Each of our volunteer programs blends these focuses in a slightly different way, depending on the community’s needs. As a result, each volunteer abroad teaching program offers a unique variety of ways to make an impact in a local community!
Supporting Local Teachers in Schools
In Sub-Saharan Africa, teachers are largely understaffed. As a result, a typical African classroom often has over 40 children to a single teacher. With the disproportion of teachers to students, many children are neglected – to no fault of the teachers – the one-on-one attention they may need to thrive in a classroom setting.
As a classroom volunteer, you’ll support local teachers by assisting in lesson planning and identifying students who may appear to be falling behind. With these students, you’ll then provide the personal attention they may not otherwise get, going through previous lessons with them at a slower pace to help them understand essential concepts. This individual tutoring is not only an enriching opportunity for you, the volunteer, but can change the life and educational direction of a child struggling in school.
After School Clubs
After-school programs in Africa are a fantastic opportunity to support children’s positive development, creating an engaging environment for kids to play and learn while their parents work. These programs also support a healthy lifestyle for growing children, providing a safe space for children to spend after school hours, keeping them away from harmful activities like substance abuse.
Volunteer teachers will support these after-school programs by spending time in developmental activities with younger children and engaging in meaningful conversations with adolescents who may have questions about growing up. Spending time in after-school clubs is a great place to use your creativity to design fun activities for youth to participate in and positively impact their development!
Teaching English Literacy in Adult Classes
As of 2018, approximately 773 million adults, 2/3 of which are women, worldwide remained illiterate in both reading and writing. A quarter of these adults live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 193 million adults do not have a fundamental education in literacy.
In Africa, tourism is a steadily growing industry, providing stable and profitable employment for many adults. However, for an individual to gain a job in the tourism sector, basic English literacy is essential.
As a part of our commitment to sustainable development in local communities, our volunteers will often teach English in adult literacy classes. Through these classes, we aim to empower locals in their English speaking skills and improve their employability. Volunteers will teach English in various adult settings throughout our programs, including women’s groups, where we aim to combat the large gender disparities in literacy.
Community Uplift Projects
Regardless of where volunteers teach English on our programs, we believe it is essential to use our volunteer resources to make a difference in uplifting communities. Community uplift projects are a fun and engaging way for volunteers to work with locals on community-led projects. In the past, these have included projects such as painting a local school or taking clothing packages to in-need families. However, these activities are highly varied depending on the current needs of the community!
Sustainable Development
Beyond this, we are committed to creating real and measurable change in local communities. We believe volunteering must go beyond merely benefitting the communities we work in on a short-term basis. Sustainable development is at the heart of what we do. It is why all of our projects are developed with community stakeholders to ensure they meet locals’ goals and are genuinely creating positive change.
Where we operate
Currently, African Impact offers volunteer teaching projects in the following African countries:
Visit our project pages to learn more about each volunteer teaching program!
