Free time activities represent a wonderful area which Engarre wants to pay attention to. Children are very resourceful and can make up many games and activities in their free time. We often watch children climb up trees and jump from one branch to another. They can play football with a plastic bottle or a bunch of old clothes tied up to form a ball. Kids compete in running, jumping to distance or jumping high. We also saw children sitting on the ground, drawing letters and pictures into the dust with their fingers or little twigs. Sometimes we met little children who already finished school that day, waiting for their older siblings, only hanging around. This brought the idea of building up a free time centre for children and support them in their sports activities.
Engarre's vision of the Free Time Centre for children is a building with a library, where kids can practice, learn and widen or deepen their school knowledge. A place to educate pre-school children up to 5-7 years with activities supporting the developement of their fine motor and graphomotor skills, practicing playful sensorimotor excercises. A place, where they can chat and tell stories, read, draw, paint, play games, spend time in a safe, friendly environment... and refresh with a glass of clean water.
Children in Tanzania enjoy plenty of movement activities. They run, jump, chase each other, climb everywhere possible and help their parents with daily works from their early age. To support them Engarre will build a multifunction playground for sports like football and basketball and provide sports equipment.
The Free Time Centre could be used not only by children but also adults. To start with we would provide some newspapers, magazines and books for adults, different board games (we already know, that they love checkers)... The centre should also be equipped with a PC to enable at least some basic computer literacy. There are many young adults who never went to school, can't read or write, but would like to. As soon as the centre is well equipped Engarre wants to cooperate with local school teachers and help increase also the literacy of adults in the community.
