Services at ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich offers a whole range of services to help you combine your work and family lives. Our offering ranges from free individual consultations to sports services for children.
Kids love to get moving, but they need enough room to play. On six Active Sundays over the winter, we give children, 0 to 8 years of age, just that: an entire gymnasium at ETH Hönggerberg full of exciting and challenging opportunities to run, swing, jump, balance, climb and more.
Hello Kids! is a service point offered by ETH Zurich for all of your questions on childcare. We can help you find extrafamilial childcare and give advice that is tailored to your personal needs.
The following departments/services can also help you:
- The Welcome Center provides information on the school system in Switzerland and for partners of doctoral or post-doctoral candidates who have joined them in Switzerland.
- HR Operations (emplyoment) informs on maternity pays family allowances and makes changes to personal data when reported (reporting a change in marital status or announcing a birth).
- Office for Faculty Affairs / Dual Career Advice Office for faculty members assists in exploring career opportunities for partners who have recently been recruited from abroad and gives start-up aid for faculty members and their families.
- Amongst other things, ETH Diversity helps to improve balancing work or studies and family life.
- The external page kihz Foundation – childcare in the Zurich university area, gives information to parents on the services it provides and general information on other childcare options.
The departements of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) and of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (D-GESS) provide a parent-child-room. It offers help to employees with childcare problems at short notice.
The departement of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS) also provides a parent-child room to assist employees facing sudden childcare challenges.
The external page kihz Foundation offers a flexible childcare service at the Zentrum campus (external page PLI building) for children aged four months to seven years. external page kihz Flex is an easy, professional and favourable care solution for parents with a sporadic childcare need on short notice.
If parents know that their children are in good hands, they can concentrate fully on their work and research. Childcare services are therefore a vital prerequisite for them to successfully balance their work and family lives.
The Hello Kids! service point helps ETH employees and students with any questions they might have on childcare. It provides information on childcare options and puts parents in touch with suitable childcare providers. Hello Kids! service point also helps organising mobile childcare during events, such as conferences, symposia or workshops and cooperates with external page kihz Mobil (childcare on demand).
Parents pay a proportion of the costs of childcare services in the university area based on their income, financial assets and other parameters relating to the structure of their household. Parents can use this external page calculator (German) to find out whether they are, in principle, entitled to financial support. The calculation is based on the requirements of the City of Zurich’s regulations on extrafamilial childcare.
Childcare places (crèches/kindergarten) of the external page kihz foundation and KIKRI crèche are subsidised. The level of subsidy depends on the parents’ income. One day of childcare costs a maximum of 130 CHF.
If you need childcare during conferences, workshops, symposia and events, the Hello Kids! service point helps you find babysitting by the hour, all-day childcare or childcare for events that last several days. As host you assume all costs for childcare and provide suitable rooms for childcare.
The external page kihz Foundation, as well as the external page city of Zurich (German) and external page Pro Juventute (German) provide a wide range of holiday clubs for children of school age (aged 4 and over) during school holidays.
With special offers for kids, ETH aims to get children interested in mathematics, IT, natural sciences and technology (MINT) and, in particular, give girls a first-hand opportunity to get to know these subjects, which are commonly considered to be non-traditional.
Kids & MINT (German)
On National Future Day in November, ETH employees can bring their 10 to 13 year-old children to work. Under the auspices of ETH Diversity, VPPL and the Office for Events & Location Development, ETH Zurich offers a specific afternoon programme in various departments, institutes, infrastructure areas and collections of ETH.
As part of the Treffpunkt Science City event series, a special programme for children from the age of 5 is organised on 4 Sundays per semester between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the FUSION coffee.
Since autumn 2006, the external page Science City Youth Chess Club (German) has been running courses for children and teenagers between 7 and 18 years of age. They are held on the Hönggerberg Campus and are open to both advanced learners and beginners.
Medical rooms with beds are available for breastfeeding mothers. Contact the staff from the Safety, Security, Health and Environment department via e-mail sgu_betriebssanitaet@ethz.ch. They will be happy to show you the medical room (respectively resting room or nursing room) closest to your working place and will provide you with a key for the suitable room upon request.
Per year ETH Zurich offers financial support to 10-15 doctoral and postdoctoral students with babies (< 18 months) with the help of the Robert Gnehm Grants. You are eligible for this support if you present your own research results at an important conference which will cause additional child care costs.
The external page kihz Foundation is able to offer financial assistance from a hardship fund. ETH members of the non-professorial staff or ETH students with family care responsibilities can get financial support from this external page hardhship fund.
ETH Diversity regularly holds mothers lunches that take place alternately at the ETH Zentrum and the Hönggerberg campuses. ETH Diversity also regularly organises workshops for fathers-to-be and fathers who want to base their individual arrangement on a broader range of information.
You can find a changing table in the wheelchair-accessible bathroom on floor D of the main building at ETH Zentrum (HG D-29.7).
Additional changing tables can be found in the centre in the buildings at Gloriastrasse 35 (wheelchair-accessible bathroom, ETZ floor E), Sonneggstrasse 5 (NO D 40.3), Leonhardstrasse 21 (LEE: D-127, E 300.3, K 200.4), Tannenstrasse 3 (CLA E 10.3) and Universitätsstrasse 16 (CHN D 50.1).
At the Hönggerberg Campus, there are changing tables in the HIL D31.2, HIL D 56.2, HIL E 56.2 wheelchair-accessible bathroom, in HCI E 9.1 and in HPT E 2.1.
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