Break The Cycle Of Poverty Through Education in GT

The English program at both our Nuestro Futuro and El Porvenir schools has made incredible progress since its founding in 2013. While NDG previously relied on long-term volunteers to lead our English classes, we now have two full-time language teachers on staff that follow and adapt the national curriculum based on our students’ needs.

English is a critical skill for our students. Given the strength of the tourism industry in and around Antigua, even a basic grasp of English can dramatically improve a student’s chances of finding a stable job once he or she graduates from our program.

The students themselves continue to be highly enthusiastic about learning a foreign language, taking every opportunity to practice their English with our international volunteers. Based on their level of interest, we’re now considering launching an English afterschool program to reinforce and expand upon what they have been learning in the classroom. Some of the parents in our adult literary program, CONALFA, have even requested private English lessons from our teachers!

Our classes are divided in half for their English lessons in order to ensure that our teachers can monitor each child’s progress with grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. While the lower grades are focused entirely on speaking and listening, the older students are now reading and writing as well.

In general, our English lessons reflect what the students are learning in their other classes. For example, while our second graders are studying healthy diets this month, they will also be learning about the food pyramid in English. What’s more, our classes are designed for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles, incorporating songs, hands-on activities, and plenty of visual aids.

Right now, our teachers are still working with limited materials, creating many of their exercises from scratch. In order to continue to grow our program, we need to purchase English-language textbooks, activities, posters, and games in the near future. If you would like to help us accomplish this goal and break the cycle of poverty through education, please donate today.

Thank you for your ongoing support!