What is children university?

Assalam International School supports talented kids to improve their skills in professional sports, STEAM, music, art and drama.

Students come at the weekends for Children University to enjoy extracurricular activities according to their choices, talents and interests, in small groups with special teachers.

At Children’s University we want to motivate all students and to inspire a strong vision to do their best for themselves, for their families and for a better Africa. We offer world-class educational courses that will ignite and nurture new passions in our students making them the best at what they learn.

Children University believes for never ending learning and promotes all channels to learn any time/in and outside of schools.

Children University

A first in Africa! For gifted and highly intelligent children! Assalam hopes the success of its Children’s University will be a source of inspiration and encouragement for the rest of Africa. For two years now Children’s University has been teaching computer, coding, robotics, languages and drama during the weekends to more than 60 students from primary and high school.

At Assalam Community Foundation’s Children’s University we want to motivate all students and to inspire a strong vision to do their best for a better Africa. We offer world-class educational courses that will ignite and nurture new passions in our students making them the best at what they learn.

Assalam Community Foundation supports talented kids to learn professional sports. Dozens of children come to learn basketball, volleyball, and chess, under the training of professional coaches.

Science

Art

Drama

Coding&Robotics

English

Computer

Sports

Mind Games

Library

Africa has the lowest literacy rate in the world. This is mostly due to a lack of access to books and other vital resources that would improve the level of education in schools. As a matter of fact, most of the children and teachers do not possess their own books. They need to borrow books from libraries, however it’s very rare to find libraries in small villages.

Assalam Community Foundation has established a children’s library in its own campus and it wants to build libraries in villages all around Zanzibar in order to change this situation. This small library was built as a first sample in our compound: a children’s library on a mango tree for the benefit of kids in Assalam Community School and Children’s University. This interactive library attracts kids through its architecture and natural playground, and it provides books in different languages, educational books and exercise books and educational toys.

Environment

At Assalam International School we care about the environment, we care about our resources and we care about Africa. We are located in a beautiful and bountiful campus on the southern part of the island of Zanzibar, a few steps away from the Indian Ocean. These gardens and beaches serve as outdoors extensions of our classrooms and help us to re-establish the link between humanity and its mother nature, the source of our nourishment and connect the school to the community and the land. We believe in sustainability through all aspects of the learning environment, curriculum and co-curricula activities of our school project.

At our campus, we want to teach our children how to care for our island, our Africa and have a low impact on our planet. All classes take active part into our beach school, permaculture and food forest. And we encourage all our students to implement a zero waste policy into their daily lives as well.

Food Forest

We believe that children need to learn all surviving skills and be independent from the outside world. That’s why we have our food forest in the backyard of the school, where classes have their own plantations. All the processes of permaculture from seed to fruit are under their responsibility, so they can produce their own food and discover its value.

Solar Panels

Compost areas and re-cycling

Water wells with watering systems

Take care of the world and people, share fairly.

Everything started with a beautiful dream.

We had a dream of a self-sufficient farm where not a single leaf is wasted, where there is no such thing as garbage, where all the leftovers are turned into utility and goodness. Our permaculture journey started in 2018 when we visited many permaculture farms from Guatemala to Indonesia, Panama to Turkey and impressed from each in different ways and our founder got Permaculture design cours. When we started to share this dream, dozens of volunteers from different cultures joined our employees and turned dreams into reality.

Assalam Permaculture Farm has activities such as vegetable and tropical fruit cultivation integrated with animals. We implement three ethical rules of permaculture: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Sharing. Although soil fertility is low, it is tried to enrich the soil in healthy and natural ways with various compost methods. A holistic design is aimed with the importance given to local seeds. Compost applications, effective microorganism production, local architectural studies, seasonal vegetable and fruit harvests, beekeeping care and honey harvesting, aromatic plant collection and breeding, poultry and cattle breeding studies are currently available.

Assalam is an active Permaculture demonstration site and has been used to teach permaculture to international and local students in Assalam’s educational projects and to tourists in sustainable community tours. In our permaculture farm each class of Assalam International school has a veggie bed and raises their plantations, Africamps and Vocational Training Center has classes-apart from volunteers, who take part any time in garden independent from their responsibilities. It is at the forefront of Permaculture Design, displaying many permaculture principles, and produces an abundance of food and yields from within its living environment.

The happiness of children watching flowers, preparing compost, playing with chickens and geese is one of our greatest sources of motivation. They can experience the limitlessness of their imagination in natural areas where they develop themselves by learning in nature, learn by playing games, and get to know nature.

Besides we try to built regenerative communities which is living according to permaculture principles, thinking global and acting local. We go to 21 villages and share our knowledge in different communities.

Assalam is a place where one can see and learn about the importance of the relationship between humans and their environment. We encourage and facilitate the process whereby people regain awareness of their role and responsibility in managing the environment in order to maintain balance. It is a place where modern technology is part of the solution, not the beginning of problems. A place where good ethical values become the basic foundation of human’s attitude towards their environment, and other humans. A place where the approach to life is cooperation, not competition. A place that brings back mutually beneficial relations between humans and nature as the basic motivation for every plan and action in our life.

OUR MAIN PERMACULTURE ELEMENTS

ECO FRIENDLY BUILDING DESIGN

Most of our rooms face the ocean and have ocean breeze in the room. We use mainly wood and stone in all our buildings, and coconut leafs for the roofs, which means house is breathing. We use no A.C. in the campus and all the rooms are designed to have natural vantilation through nets instead of glass windows. All campus has recycling bins for organic stuff, paper and other garbage. Food is mostly from farm to table.

WATER HARVESTING SWALES, RAINWATER HARVESTING & AQUACULTURE SYSTEMS

Assalam is designed to hold and capture as much water as possible. Since we are in Africa, we experience sometimes months without any single drop of rain. We never dare to waste any of it. Gravity irrigation is accessible throughout the property and can be used at any time of the year.

SUSTAINABLE ANIMAL SYSTEMS

Our animals play a key role in any ecosystem. We use them to cycle nutrients, All at the same time as providing us with ethically produced, healthy and clean, fish, meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products. We treat our animals with care and respect throughout their lives and limit any stress or suffering as much as possible at the time of slaughter. Currently we have chickens, ducks, fish and cows for milk and beef production.

ORGANIC FARMING

By avoiding destructive farming methods such as using chemicals or tilling the soil, we allowed life to return to the soil with the help of trillions of micro organisms, earthworms and other soil life. This forms the basis of our food production and makes for very nutritious food and healthy plants. We major in perennial tree crops and agro forestry systems, in other words Food Forests.

ENERGY SYSTEMS

One goal of Assalam is to create balance between body and life spirit. In our daily life, this is very closely related to our ability to use renewable energy resources in a creative way from nature around us. In Assalam we use partly solar panels for lighting and kitchen equipments, we harvest rainwater, we pump our water for pool from ocean, we have our own waterwell to use when needed and filterasation system.

SOME OF OUR PRODUCTS

Almost a hundred different types of vegetables, bushes, fruits, herbs and species, trees, bamboo and cactus species.
Various bread and cakes with local flour
Dairy products from cows and goats
(Yogurt, Butter, and Cheese)
Assorted jams from local fruit combination

COURSES

Apart from permaculture training under vocational training center and school, which lasts a year or years, we teach short permaculture courses to campers in youth center and tourists who come to Sustainable community tours.

MICROGREENS – GROWING THE FOOD OF THE FUTURE IN 10 DAYS

From seed to food in 7 days, we teach students this amazing farming technique that is taking the world by storm. Microgreens are vegetables that only have two leaves but are 40x more nutritious than a mature plant, don’t need any soil and don’t need any fertiliser as we harvest after 10 days.

We discuss how to feed the human race both efficiently and healthily without causing waste or pollution. This is a practical class where students will get first hand knowledge on how to grow food for themselves in an urban or rural environment with minimal equipment and minimal costs using often byproducts of agriculture.

COMPOST MANUFACTURING PROCESS

All of our food comes from earth, when earth is filled with much nutrition we need to use less chemical fertilizers. Students learn in this course how to make compost using nautral materials and learn how to recycle all the food and poo produced from the home. All students will actively work in steps to create compost.

PRODUCE ORGANIC COCONUT OIL, MILK YOUR COW AND PRODUCE YOUR OWN CHEESE & SOAP

During these practical lessons, campers produce organic coconut oil directly from a fresh coconut, they turn it to a natural soap, they milk our cows and produce their natural cheese and yoghurt. This give students a deeper understanding where our everyday products come from and hopefully build up a connection to nature.

EAT FRESH, FEEL FRESH – THE POWER OF HERBS AND VEGETABLES

Sometimes it is difficult to see the trees from the woods. We go in depth on how to plant, care for, maintain and harvest common plants such as carrots, spinach, tomato, herbs and many more. This allow students to create a connection with the food they eat and the garden it is growing in, hopefully instilling a passion for nature and the great outdoors.