1. A Wild Idea

So is it a mad idea to think I can build a children’s centre in Rwanda? I’ve had this idea bubbling inside since I left the country in July 24 having spent 18 months working technical advisor to VSO on early childhood education, and it’s not going away.

When I was there I wasn’t happy with the short term wooliness of the VSO project. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being there and working with the national volunteers and the schools, local government etc. The national volunteers were great. Young, enthusiastic and ready to learn, but in terms of did we make a difference I wasn’t so sure. And yet there was definitely a need there. Visiting schools and watching as 2 children got to count a handful of pens while 58 looked on was painful. Listening to children chanting ‘This is the moon.' 50 times while watching a child walk around the room holding a picture that had more resemblance to a banana was hard. It was clear that there was a huge improvement to be made, and the longer I stayed there familiarising myself with the common difficulties and the curriculum, the more ideas I had about what could be done. I just wasn’t sure whether we would have the time to provide enough support to teachers and school leaders to make the changes they needed. Change takes time, and long lasting change even longer. As we said goodbye to teachers and headteachers you could see written on their faces that they were not ready to go it alone.

I arrived home in the UK, knowing that I really didn’t want to go back into teaching. I found myself starting to think about whether I could actually set up a school and children’s centre in Rwanda. Could I build something that was 100% self-sustaining? Something that as a successful business could also fund valuable free of charge services to the community? I was thinking along the lines of the maintained nursery school I’d worked in for years in Southeast London. This was a nursery school and children and family centre. It ran community groups tailored for the local community. It had parenting play groups for different groups including children with SEND, but also had spaces for health visitors to work with families. The services tailored to meet the needs of the local community.

It is a good model. Known as Sure Start, this was tried and tested in the UK as having a long term impact on children’s outcomes. I would need to do more research of course, but what about me? Could I do this? Could I make this happen on my own?

Read on and follow my journey!