We are looking for someone to facilitate the education of children of missionaries at the Good News Project. There are typically four families with school-aged children living on the hospital compound. Each of these children attends Ecole Bonne Nouvelle, the French-speaking school associated with the project, at least some of the time. However, all of the children need to learn to read and write in English and to study in ways that enable them to slot back into school in their home country at some stage.
Supporting families to meet the educational needs of their children is a vital role in Mandritsara, enabling parents to continue their ministries within the project. Enthusiasm for working with children is vital; experience teaching children in some context would be helpful.
Key characteristics:
Enthusiasm for working with children; the children of the missionaries are aged 4-12. You can expect to be working with groups of 2 – 6 children who could be, for example, aged 4-7 or 7-10.
Mother-tongue English speaker; it is very important that the children learn to speak, read and write fluently in English. Whilst some knowledge of French is useful for living in Madagascar, it is not essential for this role.
Cross-cultural sensitivity; the current cohort of children are from Australia, Canada and the UK and so you would need to be sympathetic to different approaches to learning and ready to work in partnership with the parents
Ability to respond well to changes; to enable the parents to work in the hospital, flexibility is needed when there are unexpected local school closures or other events necessitating extra childcare/educational provision.
Flexible support for the different children's educational programmes; for instance, supervising children following online courses, helping children follow English or Maths courses in workbook form, supplementing written work with educational games, practical activities or investigations.
Length of service; we are looking for someone able to come for 6 months or longer.
This is not a paid role; you will need to raise your own funds for flights and your expenses during your time in Mandritsara. Good quality housing is available locally. All workers should be committed Christians and have the prayerful support of their home church. We expect most volunteers to come with a mission agency.