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The Rift Valley Children's Village

By the Numbers

64 children live full time at RVCV
16 more children live at RVCV during vacation from boarding school
81 Tanzanian staff employed
6 expats employed
80 volunteers each year
6 children's house on site

The Rift Valley Children’s Village (RVCV or the Children’s Village) currently provides 65 orphaned and at-risk children, who live there full time, and 16 children, who return home to the Children’s Village during vacation from boarding school. Nestled among rolling coffee plantations, in the Karatu region of Northern Tanzania, the Children’s Village is an oasis of laughter and joy. The Children’s Village staff work with local village leaders to identify the children in the surrounding community most in need of the safe haven RVCV can provide. From the moment they step through the gates, these children are no longer orphans – they become permanent members of the RVCV family. We prepare them to become informed, resourceful, and responsible citizens in their community and throughout Tanzania.

A team of Tanzanian social workers and international staff and volunteers work with each child to ensure that they are physically and emotionally cared for, and that they have the opportunity to learn and grow into responsible, happy, healthy adults. When they arrive, our children often suffer from malnutrition, weakened immune systems, and emotional scars. However, almost immediately, the healing process begins. Living together – doing chores alongside the Tanzanian housemothers and reading books with the volunteers – the children become members of a unique community which balances laughter and learning in equal measure.

Organized around a family model, the children live together in houses of twelve, with three Tanzanian house-mothers and two volunteers. The Children’s Village currently has five Children’s Houses and construction is underway on a “young men’s house,” where older boys who are returning from secondary school will stay while on school vacations.

Life at the Children’s Village is structured yet relaxed – hours spent tutoring are inter-mixed with hours spent playing soccer and finger painting. Above all else, the Children’s Village is a place where every child receives the individual attention and unconditional love that allows them to thrive.

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