Happy New Year from Travel to Teach!
2007 was an eventful year for T2T.
Our overseas programs took on real speed, with programs in 4 new countries - Nepal, Costa Rica, China and Indonesia (see below), we more than doubled the number of volunteers in our overseas programs and head office staff visited all of our overseas projects to help assure the quality of the programs.
Our very popular Thai programs developed with Chiang Mai, the beautiful northern capital of Thailand as one of our main locations. We are also preparing to start programs in Mae Hong Son on the Thai/Burmese border. Both of these programs aim to help refugees and illegal immigrants from Burma as well as Hill tribe children from northern Thailand.
We also had five wonderful interns in the office this year who were working on their graduate degrees. It was a pleasure hosting Gabriela Delgado Lopez from Sweden, Nicole Merrill from the U.S and our 3 Thai interns Jim, Phun and Gee. After graduating Jim is now co-ordinating our program in Chiang Mai
So what’s coming in 2008? Well, we know that we are starting programs in El Salvador, we have developed contacts in India and Panama that we hope will result in new worthwhile projects.
New Project: Bali, Indonesia
Travel to Teach's newest project is on the the Indonesian Island of Bali
The project is being set up by Henning Voges, who was a volunteer with us in Thailand in early 2007. After visting Bali Henning decided to develop his own project there and spent the last month learning the ropes at Travel to Teach's head office in Nongkhai before moving onto Bali.
Our program is going to based in the Gianyar region, close to the famous artisan town of Udud. We will be teaching English in local schools and carrying out restoration projects and are looking forward to receiving our first volunteers in March. For more information please visit our Bali Homepage
Volunteer of the Month: Linda
Linda a qualified teacher from Holland spent 2 months volunteering in Nongkhai, Thailand.
Whilst she was working at Ban Paw Primary School Linda's friends, familly and her fathers business raised money to enable her to restore the schools library.
With help from Britta, from Germany and Sabine from Holland and painting materials provided by T2T they set to work on completely restoring the library. With the money from her donations Linda bought much needed reading books for the school in both English in Thai, as well teaching materials for the school's English teachers. The results can be seen in the gallery below.
New Projects in Shanghai
Our project in China is not yet a year old but its already shaping up to be one of our most successful projects thanks to the hard work of our coordinator Jessie and our first volunteers.
We have recently added two new projects to our Shanghai program; working in a disabled children’s home and teaching French and German in local schools. The disabled children’s home is called the CereCare Wellness Centre for children and specializes in treating children with Cerebral Palsy. Our volunteers are able to help with a variety of tasks including care and play with the children, personal development and hygiene, helping the staff with the curriculum, and even help with the center’s website including updates and writing articles. We are happy to help in such a valuable project.
Our other new project is teaching French and German in local schools. Travel to Teach has many German and French speakers as volunteers and even though neither of these languages are part of the core curriculum in Chinese schools, they schools are keen for there students to gain exposure to other languages. Volunteers can even combine teaching either of these languages with teaching English.
We have also included in this newsletter our first two volunteer stories from China. More more information please visit our China homepage.
School Donations in Chiang Mai
We have recently started teaching in the Srilimongklatan School in Chiang Mai.
The school sits on the grounds of a temple of the same name and is a primary and kindergarten school with approximately 170 students. There is also a day care center on the premises.
The school has very little money and they are very excited by the prospect of having continuous western teachers to help with the English classes. We have already placed a few volunteers in the school and the children love the volunteer teachers and the volunteers find their work at this school very rewarding. The day care center takes care of young children of mainly Burmese refugees whom are mostly day laborers working on construction sites and are in need of good care for their children while they are at work.
As both the school and the day care center are lacking in money and essentials, Travel to Teach recently made some donations to both. To the school we gave all kinds of teaching materials; pens, notebooks, books, paint and a CD player. To the Day Care Center we donated cribs, mattresses, pillows, and toys for the children. It is a pleasure for us to have the ability to help out and we look forward to sending many more volunteers to this school.
Please mail your comments on this newsletter to Travel to Teach.