VVS is a registered not for profit NGO, operating the project which comprises five programs focussing on the care, support and educational needs of the children. Canadian social worker, Lynda Kearns, started her work in Tanzania in 2002. With the help of the VVS board, she founded a home for vulnerable children in 2004 in the village of Mlandizi.

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Since then, the project has grown to include pre-primary and primary schools, an accelerated secondary school program for disadvantaged girls, and is coordinating an adult education program which will begin in 2024. The facilities now include a large dormitory for 80 girls, a more modest dorm for boys, and staff quarters, as well as farming and school bus operations, and supporting food services. The large new kitchen sees well over a thousand meals cooked each school day, served in our airy dining room. VVS employs over 45 local Tanzanians, including 25 qualified teachers. The school facility now has twelve classrooms, in addition to the Administrative block. In the farming department, livestock includes barns for a small herd of dairy cows, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys while there are garden areas for green vegetables, an orchard of tropical fruit trees, and some thirty cashew nut trees.

 

The farming operation helps with our food costs, but is aso a useful teaching platform for instruction of the school kids, and for the adult education program. And the most important feature of the site (ask any of the youngish participants!) is the football (soccer) field. There are also playground equipment areas for the preprimary children.

 

Lynda is a director for both CDS and VVS, and spends half of each year in Tanzania at the project.