About us

Our story

Peace Matunda Children´s Center was founded in 2005 by Unambwe Zephania Kaaya, a professional wildlife guide and community leader. Due to the difficulties he saw facing the local people ‘Kaaya’ initiated the project for the benefit of his community, providing jobs through cultural tourism and safaris of the local area.

In 2005, Kaaya opened the door of his family home to five children from the area who were without family support. The term ‘orphan’ in Tanzania is the status given to a child whose parents have either both died or who have had one parent die. Due to the financial strain on a one parent family (especially in the case of just the mother) the prospect of looking after several children can often be too hard a burden to bear. Therefore, some parents choose to seek help at orphanages to help take care of the welfare of their child. Children come to us from a variety of unfortunate backgrounds that include parental illness, accidental death (often from the mining industry) and abandonment. Despite the prevalent and most well known causes of mortality in East Africa, poverty claims the most victims through lack of access to basic healthcare, water sanitation and hygiene and ultimately, education for a better way of life.

Not long after this, the first primary class opened on site and the building of the first orphanage dormitory began. After a lot of hard work, many generous donations and volunteers, we have 40 permanent resident children, almost 200 children from the community attending school, and since 2014, we have expanded the school to see the children through to secondary school.

We are an English medium school following the Tanzanian curriculum. All our teachers are Tanzanian and work tirelessly to provide a well-rounded education for the children. Our subjects include Kiswahili, English, Maths, Science, History, Civics, Geography, Arts, and Sports. Along with our children, our teachers are the soul of our school, offering their skills at below the average wage for their standing. Without great, hardworking teachers we would not be doing justice to the children of this school.

As a non-profit organization we look for sponsorship for our children as well as teachers. Continual training development and providing a competitive salary in reward for their dedication are just a few of the reasons we need your help. It is our aim for volunteers to provide educational support both in and outside the classrooms. Volunteers often come from a diverse skills background so whether you have teaching experience or not, we welcome your interest in contributing to lessons and exchanging ideas with our staff. To find out more please visit our VOLUNTEER page.

We are lucky to be supported by Small Changes. They offer their help through providing not only their time and effort as well as routes for child sponsorship and funding but imparting their knowledge of education, child welfare and health matters. If you’re interested in helping us through them, please do get in touch.