Help Educate Children Living in Poverty inThailand

Dear Supporters, 

In the third quarter of 2018, we continued to improve our skills in teaching the students with new learning approaches and teaching methods. We worked with all of our regular partners, the Community Development Center (CDC), the BNK Thai school, Bantham Namchai kindergarten and The Camilian Social Center, progressing towards SDGs 3 and 4 through educating students in English and good hygiene practices.

On the 18th of July, we held a Spelling Bee between the CDC and the BNK School, each with ten children aged eleven to fifteen participating. It was a TEFL Intern’s leadership project. The competition was the first of its kind here. This was also the first time the two schools had come together to do something with GVI during term-time and was a great to mix in a competitive environment. Our objectives were to improve listening and speaking skills of the students at our two schools (SDG 4 and 17), to inspire both male and female students to work competitively (SDG 5) and to show that both Thai and Burmese students can be equally competent at language learning (SDG 10). The Burmese CDC students won First, Second and Third place. This showed us that the hard work that GVI has done over the last five years with this school has demonstrably paid off and their English skills are more proficient than BNK students. It was a success and we hope to continue this project to create an annual competition. Overall, this was a good assessment of our teaching, and proved itself to be a great listening and speaking skill assessment tool.

We have continued to support the Camillian Social Center on a weekly basis. We continually try to introduce the children to new experiences with new games, sensory activities and outdoor experiences, improving their wellbeing (SDG 3). A healthcare volunteer who came for two weeks who herself has cerebral palsy put together a document and gave us tips on how to better use our time in working with students affected by this condition, and provided inspiration and education on cerebral palsy to us, to the staff of the center and to the students who attend.

At the BNK Thai school we now work with the youngest three grades three days a week, which has noticeably improved their English compared to last year’s one hour per week. We have also followed the advice of the Laos hub by integrating the multisensory learning approach Jolly Phonics into each lesson with these classes for twenty minutes out of every hour of class. We have also integrated this learning approach into the Bantham Namchai Kindergarten classes, where we have increased our time with each class to three hours per week. This will help pronunciation, spelling and word identification in leaps and bounds, and with the oldest classes at each school we have already begun to notice encouraging improvement (SDG 4).

In the last week of September the CDC underwent exam season, so throughout September we reviewed material learnt during the entire term, and wrote exams for the students. Each exam was tailored for the class and we wanted to be able to accurately measure our impact on their education. We were pleased to record an average score of over 60% across all classes, which is improved from their midterms in July, where they had achieved a 45% average score. We are confident that this has to do with quality training of our teachers and sufficient review time for all the topics learnt. We expect another increase in scores during the December midterms (SDG 4). We have also developed the school garden at the CDC. The school is now that much closer to being able to use the crops in their everyday meals, improving sustainability (SDGs 2 and 12). The students at the CDC have also been receiving weekly healthcare lessons as part of their education (SDG 3).

We have been working on our teaching styles and tracking our progress at the schools by using new techniques, like the spelling bee competition, to make sure that ours is a project we are proud of. As we move into the october break, we are reopening our evening adult classes, providing our community with quality education and a chance to improve their employability. We will spend more time at the Bantham Namchai kindergarten and at the Camilian center, to continue to support our partners and our students. To read more about the support we give to all of our amazing partners, follow this link:

https://gvi.org/project/supporting-community-development-in-phang-nga/.

Thank you so much for your interest and support - we cannot develop our project without you.

Thanks from Amelia and Bob here on the Community Project in Phang Nga