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History - How It All Started

In July 2021 we (Tanja and Daniel Mettler, together with our two children) volunteered in Arusha. We visited three different non-profit daycares and then worked for a few weeks at UCDC, a small non-profit daycare near Mianzini. 

All these daycares were doing their best help prepare children for the Tanzanian school system, while trying to cater to the expectations of parents. We met loving teachers, wonderful children and amazing people trying to make all this possible. 

We fell in love with the Tanzanian people.

Core Challenges of Daycares

It quickly became apparent that all of these daycares had huge challenges:

  1. extremely limited resources
  2. children from very poor backgrounds
  3. focus on wrote learning (memorizing information)
  4. need to learn English
  5. difficulty hiring teachers, especially teachers proficient in English

Principles for Solutions that Work

We were convinced that solving this dilema requires some core principles:

  1. It must prepare children with success-skills
  2. It must use the people which are already there, no matter what their skill-set is
  3. It must work within the culture and mindset of people in Africa
  4. It must be extremely cost-effective
  5. All involved must be treated with utmost respect

UCDC-A Visionary Daycare

We are extremely grateful for UCDC, it's manager Daniphord Mwajah and the teachers of UCDC who worked with us to develop the Swiss School System.

Together we tried many ideas, discarded most of them and improved on what works. The teachers were open to trying so many things in such a short time, and gave us continous feedback for everything. 

Visit Twiga Vision to learn more about the UCDC Daycare.