Contact Us
Education Village International (EVI)
P.O. Box 14317
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Tel: +255 22 2667792
Fax: +255 22 2666827
Email: EducationVillage@gmail.com
Web: www.educationvillage.org

Internship and Volunteer Programs

     Education Village International (hereafter EVI), a Tanzanian non-profit organization, is establishing an internship/volunteer to Tanzania program. The program offers a two month to six months program for current college students, recent graduates of colleges and universities outside Tanzania who are interested in independent living in Tanzania that combines (1) intensive, world-class instruction and practice in Swahili, (2) work experience with an indigenous social enterprise and non profit organizations selected from a range of sectors and locations in Tanzania, (3) accommodation in a welcoming, Swahili-speaking home, and (4) youth-oriented tourism for group or solo travel in Kilimanjaro and other favored Tanzanian travel destinations.

     This innovative program serves those dynamic future leaders of development who are interested in building their capacities to work effectively in Africa, particularly through social enterprise (income-generating business that has a social or for-benefit mission related to socio-economic development) and non profit organizations. EVI believes that immersion in the culture, including the language of Swahili (Africa's only indigenous language with aspirations to unify the Continent), will be vital for these future leaders of social change. This immersion helps foreigners to look at the challenge of socio-economic development through the eyes of African experience, society, and personality. Moreover, the visitors are enabled to contribute their freshly minted intellectual capacities to some specific business venture(s) and organization focus (be it in socio-economic, cultural development, human rights issues, etc) that can use technical assistance in such activities as research, teaching, communications, planning, organizing, promotion, and fundraising.

     Most interns or volunteers prefer a two-months program, spending the first three weeks taking an intensive Swahili training followed by five weeks of volunteer work in the field of their interest. Swahili instruction takes three hours of each weekday in a class of less than 10, using EVI state-of-the-art facility in a modern office building in downtown Dar es Salaam. The rest of the day is available for practice at the facility and out around the city.

     While in Dar es Salaam the interns/volunteers either choose to live in EVI's two furnished group housing in Mikocheni B and Kinondoni or live with a host families offering warm hospitality in modest circumstances. Both options give plenty of language practice. The program can only take 10 interns/volunteers at a time with a gap of one month in between to prepare and organize for a next incoming group. The admission of 10 in a group aims to give visitors plenty of scope for socializing with each other in all sorts of activities around the Dar area and on the offshore islands (Zanzibar, Pemba et al).

     Students take a Swahili course exam at the end of the three-week course. Here they evaluate the progress they have made in speaking and listening, and typically they bring their skills in reading and writing into better alignment with their more conversation skills.

     After completing the language immersion course, participants contract as volunteers, interns, or business facilitators with one of the EVI's partner NGOs in Tanzania. If the choice of work requires a student to move outside Dar and thus to change his/her living accommodations, EVI helps the student to arrange this move in collaboration with the organization that the student wants to work for. Also many participants take time for travel and tourism often in the last week of the program.

     Information about EVI may be obtained by contacting Mr. Innocent Bash, EVI Program Manager, by e-mail: EducationVillage@gmail.com Postal address: P.O. Box 14137, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Volunteering and Internship Program

Why Tanzania needs volunteers?