The Caledonia Rose Infant School

The Caledonia Rose Infant School belonging to the community is one of Foundation Zimbabwe projects in the Goromonzi District , Mashonaland East Province just outside Harare providing Early Childhood Development Education and a semolina porridge feeding scheme to the children of Caledonia in the best interest of their nutrition and health.

At least 80 children are enrolled at the school with four teachers at the school from the local community.  The teachers have been trained in partnership with Morgan Teachers College in Harare and are supervised and managed to ensure that they perform to a certain standard. Volunteers from the community participate in activities at Caledonia Rose Centre.

Girls and women caregivers come and learn skills that they can use to generate an income to allow them to pay for the further education of their children.

Girls and women in the past have been taught mushroom production and organic vegetable gardening up until now as well as setting up a sewing project. Patchwork shopping bags have been sewn in the skills development using donated scrap materials.

More income generating projects  and skills training will be undertaken in the future including opportunities for community members to attend workshops on other issues including business entrepreneurship, nutrition etc.

The feeding programme at the centre provides children in the community with one semolina porridge meal a day that ensures their physical growth and development and allows them the capability to learn and play as children should.   We feed the 80 children at our school as well as 220 further most vulnerable children from the community daily, dependent on funds and the provision of food.

The children are fed on semolina porridge and peanut butter which are made locally.  Foundation Zimbabwe aims to support the Zimbabwean economy where possible so long as it provides the best care for our children.

When working with children in the communities in which we operate, many issues regarding parenting become apparent.  Our team works with the parents and caregivers in the community to deal with such issues, carrying out focus group discussions and dealing with topics that arise out of these discussions including personal hygiene, nutrition and child abuse.

Our on the ground staff have been joined by individual sports professionals to provide the children with activities to assist with gross and fine motor skills including ball skills and balance as well as general fitness.  We have a sports area for children to play and learn and they love having guest volunteers come and spend time with them having fun and getting strong.

Our nurse visits the Caledonia Rose Infant School two times a month to spend time with the children at the school and to assess their physical and emotional health and development.  She advises us on what we can do to help, where we can, or refers the children to a clinic where we cannot help.  She also works with the parents and caregivers to ensure that they understand the basics of caring for their children.