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.

 

The Juniors Club of the ASVZ (Academic Sports Association Zurich) is open to children from the age of 4 and is held every Saturday and Sunday between 10:00 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Polyterrasse. Motivated instructors animate the children to do sports and enjoy themselves.

external pageASVZ Juniors Club

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 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 pagekihz Foundation offers a flexible childcare service at the Zentrum campus (external pagePLI building) for children aged four months to seven years. external pagekihz 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 pagekihz 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 pagecalculator (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 pagekihz 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.

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.

ETH provides financial support for baby’s nursery places. Parents whose babies under 18 months are cared for outside of the family can protected pageapply for a refund of the price difference between a baby’s nursery place and an infant’s nursery place in accordance with the  DownloadGuidelines on financial support for baby’s nursery places (PDF, 302 KB). Parents are not eligible for financial support from ETH Zurich to cover baby and toddler nursery places that are subsidized by the city of Zurich, as subsidized places do not entail any additional costs for parents. Applications for financial support are therefore unnecessary. The same goes for nursery places at kihz daycare centres and the KIKRI ETH Zentrum, Spielchischte crèche, and Irchel crèche, which are already subsidised by ETH Zurich.

Important information on support for baby's nursery places:

The school management decided in November 2023 that support for baby's nursery places for daycare centres outside the kihz foundation will be discontinued as of 1 August 2024.

The funds freed up will be used to expand childcare at kihz, in particular for flexible childcare and to increase flexibility for parents in terms of the number of childcare days that can be booked.


DownloadInformation sheet on financial support for baby's nursery places (PDF, 64 KB)

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 pageScience 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 . 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.

Overview on available nursing rooms

ETH Zurich's plans, floorplans and buildings directory

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 pagekihz 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 pagehardhship 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.

ETH Zurich's plans, floorplans and buildings directory

Contact

Hello Kids!
Service point for childcare
  • +41 44 632 88 67

ETH Zurich

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