By Alice Hawkes | Charitable Trust Team
Not only are we teaching English, but we are now also making improvements to the environment that the children are being taught in.
GVI Laos began its first construction project in August 2012 with one volunteer, David Bartlett. David was here for 2 weeks during August. The project target for this first time was to refurbish the classrooms at Wat Mano. The school at Wat Mano is the primary Novice Monk School. GVI has been teaching English at Wat Mano for over 2 years. Primary aged Novices complete their primary schooling at Wat Mano before commencing their secondary education at either Wat Pha-O or Wat Sipphouthabaht.
Due to lack of funds, the Primary Novice School had seen no improvements to the standard of the classrooms. The 2 classrooms at Wat Mano were in very poor condition – no wall covering, holes in the floor, poor lighting. The construction project involved the lining and painting of the classroom walls, repairing the floors, strengthening and painting the tables and benches.
The 2 weeks’ work was carried out just in time for the return of the 25 new students to the 2012-2013 academic year. GVI will be continuing to teach English at Wat Mano throughout 2012 – 2013.
A special feature of Wat Mano Primary School is the collaboration that has occurred between GVI and Mylibrary. Mylibrary is a well resourced and active library in Luang Prabang that also works with establishing libraries in schools. Mylibrary and GVI have worked together on a computer project at Wat Mano where the computers supplied by Mylibrary assist in the teaching and learning of English. Mylibrary supplied the computers, desks and programming whilst GVI installed a secure room for the computer space.
An aim of GVI is to work in partnership with locals and through this project, several partnerships were formed. The Director of the primary school and the Abbot of Wat Mano approved the work under GVI’s management and a local carpenter worked alongside the GVI volunteer. The outcome of this project are 2 brighter and better equipped classrooms for the Novices to study in and the Teachers to teach in.
A blog story on this project can be found at www.gvilaos.blogspot.com
For details on the projects on offer in Laos, see the website at http://www.gvi.co.uk/volunteer-in-laos
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