Please watch a 6-minute film covering the early education in Malawi and the Model Center Umodzi-Mbame. Have a look at a photo-gallery.

boNGO raises standards of the rural childcare centers through establishing Model Childcare Centers that provide high-quality care for the children and serve as a training facility for training teachers from surrounding centers too. The first Model Childcare Center boNGO has supported is Umodzi-Mbame in Juma village, T/A Somba, Blantyre rural. The center has:

• trained teachers
• suitable building and playground area
• teacher-student ratio 1:10
• various teaching and playing materials made from locally available materials (photogallery)
• daily nutritious lunch
• teacher training program for teachers from surrounding centers
• more activities in the afternoon, from which the whole community can benefit (library and afternoon youth club)

The Model Childcare Center Umodzi-Mbame was built in 2005/2006. There are 80 children coming every morning Monday to Friday to learn, play and receive a nutritious meal made of rice, milk, sugar and nuts. It has become a habit that children graduating from the Umodzi-Mbame center do very well at the primary schools; not only can they already write and count but they also concentrate and learn new things easier.

Comments of the teachers, parents and the headmaster of the local primary school.

Teachers at the center

There are eight teachers employed who come from the surrounding villages. Since the beginning they have been intensely trained and monitored by the boNGO Team and have become real professionals using different teaching methods with emphasize on learning through play and individual approach to the students. The most senior teachers are already qualified to participate in facilitation of the trainings conducted here for teachers from other centers.

Management of the center

The Center is managed by an Executive Committee consisting of nine local volunteers. An important role is played also by the parents of children that come every day to cook and clean, and pay a monthly contribution towards the operational costs ($ 0.6). The monthly budget of the center is around $ 580 (teachers’ salaries $320, food for children $ 210, firewood/soap, chalk etc $50).

New Model Childcare Center

Currently boNGO works on the development of a new Model Childcare Center called Mango in cooperation with the Tiyende Pamodzi CBO in the Kantimbanya village.