Pamoja Tunalea Daycare and Nursery School – Moshono, Arusha
We are happy to welcome another project:
The Pamoja Tunalea Daycare consists of a kindergarten with an attached preschool. The facility was founded in August 2021 by Penina Mollel. Penina herself grew up as an orphan in the Moshono district and knows what it is like to be dependent on the help of others as a child. With the support of an English couple, she was able to become a teacher and now wants to give something back to the children on the streets of Moshono.
With the support of her husband Emmanuel, who is also a teacher at a government school, she was able to set up the daycare. At the beginning, she picked up the children herself in the morning, gave them food, taught them and drove them home herself in the evening. While the children are being looked after, the families have the opportunity to go to work and earn an income. Unfortunately, there are no public daycare facilities for children under 6 in Tanzania.
There are now 37 children aged 18 months to 5 years in the facility and Penina has the support of two teachers, a cook, a driver, a cleaner and a security guard for the night. The whole team works on a voluntary basis and does not receive a regular salary. The whole team treats the children with so much love and care to create a safe place for them where they can get something to eat, learn and play. The school motto is “LOVE AND CARE” and you can really see that there every day.
Penina herself leads groups as a meditation teacher and works for the organization Rise Africa, where she also manages school sponsorships.
She puts her entire income into the facility and tries to pay her employees if there is anything left over after food, rent and the cost of the school bus. The parents should pay a monthly amount of around €20. Sadly, this is not possible for any family and everyone gives the most they’re able to. Unfortunately, this is not nearly enough to cover the running costs and so the facility is dependent on donations.
Penina has been working with STEP Africa since July 2023 and volunteers come to the Pamoja Tunalea Daycare to support them with their work and donations. This is already a great help and yet the facility is still in its early stages.
We are currently pursuing two major goals:
1. Collect donations and build up reserves to buy an available piece of land
2. Arrange school sponsorships for the children who have to leave Pamoja due to their age
Why is owning your own property necessary?
There are two major reasons, firstly the annual rent of around €1,600 is a very large financial burden for the running of the daycare. Secondly, tenants in Tanzania unfortunately have no legal rights. This means on any given day the landlord can increase the rent or terminate the rental agreement without giving reasons. This represents a great deal of uncertainty and stress towards Penina.
In addition, she is not allowed to teach the children on rented property which causes constant problems with the local authorities.
Owning your own property offers indescribable security to tackle these problems! Even in 2024, the facility was on the verge of closing several times because the rent could not be paid.
A piece of land is a big investment and that’s not all – experience has shown, however, that once a piece of land has been acquired, it is possible to build a building step by step through many individual fundraising campaigns by volunteers. The biggest step is to acquire our own land and we would now like to tackle this with our joint efforts. We have already looked around for this and currently have a 5000 m2 plot of land in mind for the equivalent of around €13,500.
If you would like to support us, please state “Pamoja new building” as the intended purpose when making your donation.
There will be updates via Instagram (paomja.tunalea.daycare + givingsmiles.ev) and, upon request, by email. If you have any further questions, please write to us at pamoja@givingsmiles.org and we will provide you with sufficient information.
School sponsorships
In order to support the children of the Pamoja Tunalea Daycare even after their time at the facility, we arrange school sponsorships. You can find more information on this on our information sheet. Every year around 15 students leave the facility and we would be very happy if we could give them the opportunity to attend an English-speaking primary school.
If you have any further questions, please write to us at any time – we look forward to hearing from you! Asante sane!
For more information you can also visit the Pamoja Tunalea Daycare website. Please click here.
