Sunday, June 12, 2011



Today Xayadeth College, a GVI partner school, kicked off its Children’s Summer School Program with 7 eager local kids. GVI was able to provide support to the Lao teacher, Mr Peng, with 2 volunteers and GVI Field Staff member Sam, to help the students get the most personal attention and exposure to native English speakers.
This is the second year running that Xayadeth’s Director, Mr Peang, has arranged summer school classes which have proven to be a great success. As is typical with Laos, things start small and word quickly spreads that English classes are available and suddenly community members are turning up in droves to learn! What a different story to schools in the west 
Not being sure of the level of the students, which have a tendency to vary hugely and be completely unrelated to age or year level at government schools, Mr Peng navigated through the first lesson of the summer school with typical greetings and intro conversation. Students started off shy, but by the end of the class were confidently holding lengthy conversations with excellent pronunciation! It is so rewarding to see good results so quickly and it is a testament to their enthusiasm and genuine eagerness to learn, along with good teaching of course, which enables such terrific progress!
Mr Peang aims to introduce both morning and afternoon classes once numbers build up, which will form the crux of the summer program for GVI’s Childcare Volunteering Program, along with multiple classes at a local temple with novice monks, two other schools and a community centre. The feedback from volunteers so far is good and with the numbers of volunteers joining the program ever increasing it’s set to be a wonderful success for Luang Prabang young people and volunteers alike!
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