Africa Orphanage Volunteering

General Info

Africa Orphanage Volunteering promotes volunteering to help 135 children living at the Hisani and Watoto orphanages in Buswelu village, near Mwanza, in Tanzania.

They are some of the 1,200,000 children in the country who have lost their parents as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Both orphanages were set up by local people using their own money which is now exhausted. Income from volunteers is used to help meet the costs of their care, food, education and health needs.

All the volunteer fee goes to the kids. Unlike many programmes volunteers book their placements and pay their money directly to the orphanages. There are no expensive intermediaries whose administrative and marketing costs have to be taken from the fee before the children benefit. The cost of this website is met by Kids Aid Tanzania.

Volunteers improve the life chances of the children through teaching pre-school and primary school English and Maths, organising recreational and sporting activities and helping with building and decorating. In return they make many friends and experience what life is like in a semi-rural community in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Over 100 volunteers, from ages 18 to 67, have helped at the orphanages in the 3 years since volunteering first began. They have come from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, many European countries, UK and USA.