What’s happening at the Children's Eco Village?

A new phase for the pioneering Children's Eco Village in Tanzania will see the building of a school on site for 50 resident girls and 150 local children. Retrofitting our original houses will bring our homes back up to full capacity, meaning the village will once again care for more orphaned and vulnerable Tanzanian girls.

What is the Children's Eco Village?

In 2012, Islamic Help set up the Children's Eco Village in the Mkuranga District of Tanzania, 40km south of Dar es Salaam. The village is a ground-breaking initiative designed to promote environmental sustainability and provide a stable and loving home for orphaned and vulnerable girls. It provides a safe, supportive, and healing natural environment for the girls who live there, whilst modelling a sustainable way of living through the on-site permaculture farm, eco-mosque, and specialised eco home design.

Tanzania has almost 2.6 million orphans, the majority of which are due to HIV/AIDS. Over 40% of Tanzanians live below the poverty line, the vast majority of these in rural and semi-rural areas like Kisemvule. With the average family struggling to meet their basic needs, widows and extended families often struggle to care for orphaned children. Opportunities for women and girls are still relatively restricted, with barriers to education a major problem. On top of this, vulnerability to natural disasters is high in this part of Africa, and climate change is already having significant impacts.

Eco-School Project

One of the visions of the Children's Eco Village has always been to impact more people than just the girls who live there. By building our school, we will further extend the benefits of the village into the local community, and across generations.

The school will teach a groundbreaking environmental curriculum to embed a deep connection with nature and the environment; and will teach practical sustainability skills that will provide life skills, employability skills, and a basis for further training. The curriculum will be supported by Muslim teachings around environmental stewardship of the Earth.

Following on from the of the 5th house built at the village, the school will use the same principles to provide a naturally cool, secure, and attractive environment without the use of air-conditioning. The school will be made up of 2 blocks around a central courtyard, with outdoor learning also emphasised by using a range of areas around the Eco-Village site.

The ecologically responsible building will be a learning tool in and of itself and the potential for growth of the school will provide extensive training opportunities for students and members of the local community. Outside of school times, the building will provide learning spaces for the local community, providing comfortable spaces for adult education. An on-site campsite will facilitate residential visits from other schools, who will benefit from the amazing atmosphere and opportunities of the Eco-Village to imagine a different way of living.

By bringing education to the forefront of the goals of the Eco-Village, we hope that students will go on to develop and implement adaptations that will mitigate impacts of climate change in Tanzania.