AV Tanzania

I absolutely loved my time with AV on the teaching programme in Tanzania in 2010.
AV were really helpful beforehand with lots of fundraising ideas and information before I left for Tanzania and they answered all the questions my parents had too.
Our group was split between 4 schools around Arusha and Moshi. I lived with 3 other girls in a house in our school grounds, we had very sporadic water and no electricity but we quickly grew to love our new home. All the teachers at the school were really interested in us and the kids loved us, we taught classes of roughly 100 kids in pairs, which was mayhem to begin with but the kids loved it and by the end of the program we could really see their English improving. We also introduced a sports afternoon every week which they really loved as they didn't have the equipment for any activities usually.
The AV rep was always available over the phone if we ever needed her for any advice, she also visited us at the school to see how we were settling in and we always felt really safe there as everyone in the village knew us.
All of our group met up every weekend to do other activities round either of our towns. Our free travel was amazing, we chose to climb Kilimanjaro and go to Zanzibar during half term, we used Kilimanjaro to raise money for our school and had loads of new tables made (the old ones sometimes collapsed mid lesson with 5 kids perched on them!) and painted several classrooms to brighten things up.
After our teaching placement finished we all went to Uganda for white water rafting and then we went onto Kenya to travel and AV had organised the Masai Mara safari at the end of the time for us which was amazing.
I would really recommend AV, everything felt so organised and we always had help or advice whenever we needed it. The whole experience was incredible.
You will also make friends for life on this kind of placement, 3 of our school group still sponsor a little girl who was 3 years old at the time of our placement, a granddaughter of one of the teachers. We sponsor her to go to a private English speaking school so we still have close links with everyone at Ilkidinga and regular updates about life there.