The Caledonia Rose Preschool

The Caledonia Rose Preschool was built in a high density area just outside Harare to provide preschool education and feeding to the children of Caledonia who do not have access to such facilities in their community.

80 children are catered for at the school with four teachers involved in the school from the local community.  The teachers have been giving basic training and are supervised and managed to ensure that they perform to a certain standard.

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

Caregivers have been taught mushroom production and organic vegetable gardening up until now as well as setting up a sewing project. We are hoping to start projects including peanut butter production and candle making.  We have a programme in the winter where community members are provided with wool and are paid per piece for scarves that they knit to be sold in town.

We hope to implement more income generating projects in the future as well as providing 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 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.  TFP 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 Preschool 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.