Towards the end of my trip in Tanzania, a few other students and I chose to visit Rhotia Valley Children’s Lodge for our community service day. This lodge is a home to many orphaned children in Tanzania. Unlike most orphanages, Rhotia Valley Children’s lodge is not solely funded by donations. Instead, they have facilities on their land that people, like tourists, can stay at. These facilities directly fund the education, food, and housing of the children at the lodge. The facilities they have include tented lodges, a bakery, dairy farm, and coffee shop (which was just a short walk from my campus that we walked to a bunch).
Sounds like an awesome place with amazing goals, huh? To top that, Rhotia Valley Children’s Home has won the following awards: Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, Best Community Focused Property (2017 and 2018), Best Value Safari Property (2018), and Best Ecologically Responsible Property (2018), and Trip Advisor’s Certificate of Excellence (2018). In addition to these awards, they are partnered with Pack for a Purpose (an organization with the goals to make travel meaningful by packing light and leaving room to pack supplies that will benefit community projects around the world), and the Golder Trust for Orphans (a global employee-run charity that aims to help orphaned children’s quality of life).
When I was there, we had the best time! I did not expect it to have such an impact on me, which is why I am sharing my experience in this blog post! The children and staff were so excited to see us and welcomed us with open arms and big hearts. We read books with the children- which was so precious, played soccer, played a version of hide-and-go-seek on the grounds, played on their new playground, and taught them how to play duck-duck-goose! When it was time for us to leave, all the children gathered together to sing a song for us. It was so sweet. It was a song about friendship and thankfulness for the day they had with us. I wish I got it on video so I could share it with you, but that will now just be something very special in my memory.
If you plan on going to Tanzania or are researching places to stay for your African safari experience, please please please look into Rhotia Valley Children’s Home. It is a BEAUTIFUL lodge with an amazing view of Ngorongoro Forest, villages, and local farm fields. For a bonus, there are no mosquitos because of the high altitude :)
To find out more information, please visit their website (linked below under “References”). Though they are not solely based on donations, they still do accept them. To learn how you can make a difference for these children, visit the “Make A Change” tab on their website.
Check out this video of my time here at Rhotia Valley Children's Home!!!
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