Early Learning Center (ELC)
In the middle of Mondesa Township in the Namibian coastal city of Swakopmund, Little House of Hope has been operating a kindergarten, a preschool, and an after-school care center for primary school children with its Early Learning Center (ELC) since 2014.
With this unique project, we offer children from the extremely challenging environment there a place where they can learn and develop freely. In our kindergarten and preschool project, 125 children are currently cared for in 5 classes in the mornings. In the afternoons, around 80 children use our program who are already attending grades 1 to 3 in public schools and are further supported by a complementary program from Little House of Hope.
We work in partnership with MYO Mondesa Youth Opportunities, a Namibian support project in Swakopmund. MYO has been very successfully dedicated for more than ten years to providing academic support for approximately 120 students in grades 4 to 8. Since schools in Namibia are almost always overcrowded, underfunded, and characterized by high failure rates, nearly 50% of all students leave school without a diploma or further qualification.
Together with MYO, we are counteracting this and offering an effective, holistic educational concept – with success: 100% of the students supported by us and MYO pass their final exams.
The Little House of Hope Foundation was founded in 2007 as a direct result of the founders’ personal confrontation with the extremely difficult living conditions of many Namibian children, especially the situation of AIDS orphans. Thus, the goal of past and current projects is to improve the difficult living conditions of children in the townships.
The foundation’s first, smaller activities – kindergarten and preschool in Windhoek and Keetmanshoop, each for approximately 20 children – were able to become independent as desired and planned in 2013, thanks to the framework conditions we created.
Since 2014, the foundation’s focus has been on the Early Learning Center in Swakopmund, because our experience shows that Namibia and its society can only be further developed and led into a better future through a targeted approach to educational support.
