Kindy Boxes

The Rotary Club of Richmond initially visited Timor Leste in June 2008, and consulted with the East Timorese about the kindergarten sector. It also sought the advice of others who work in, and have extensive experience of, the country and in particular the education sector.

It decided that there was a need to asssist the kindergarten sector and that it would do this by supporting Sister (Sr) Aurora Pires who was working valiantly to address some of the problems of the sector, in particular the professional development of teachers.

Sr Aurora believes that by training teachers to nurture their young students they can heal wounds and break the cycle of trauma to build a humanistic and truly democratic society.

Sr Aurora requested that the project help provide some of the vital resources which are so lacking in the kindergartens.

Every aspect of this project has been requested, or agreed to, by Sr Aurora. The project is totally focused on addressing local needs with culturally appropriate solutions.

It was decided to provide resources to individual teachers rather than kindergartens. It was thought that this would encourage the teachers to better value the donated items.

And so the idea of a Kindy Box was born. And then it became three Kindy Boxes:

• consumable type of resources (Kindy Box A),
• wooden educational resources (Kindy Box B) and
• a resource kit for teaching handwriting (Kindy Box C).

A Kindy Box is given to a teacher on successful participation in a professional development session.

Each Kindy Box is 'sponsored' and the sponsor is linked to an individual teacher.

In order to keep the cost of sponsorship within the reach of individuals, it was decided to seek organisations as donors. They underwrite some of the value of each Kindy Box.

Our Kindy Boxes are really a partnership between individual sponsors and donors!