Education Costa Rica Project #9219

Upskill a Community to Fight Poverty in Costa Rica

by Action Change (Formerly GVI Trust)

Project Report | Sep 12, 2014
Introduction of Adult English Beginners' Course

By Sophie Birkett | Head of Operations, Charitable Trust

Dear Supporter,

Whilst continuing with our support of the primary schools in the Quepos region, the GVI team decided to introduce a once a week lesson on Wednesday evenings for adults in the community to learn som English.

One of our current interns spent a lot of time developing a highly successful six week adult course completely from scratch. Topics covered included introductions, numbers, simple verbs, family, places and daily routines. The sessions were led by the intern and supported by the volunteers who did one-on-ones with the students.

Although the course was aimed at beginners, we had a wide range of people attending, from students who study English at college, to adults who had never before had a chance to learn any English at all. It was heart-warming to see their determination as they returned week after week and slowly improved and progressed. The fact that they were coming because they wanted to, shows how important learning English is to the community.

Everyone involved felt that these sessions were the biggest achievement in the programme over the last month and a half, leading to the planning of an expansion to two sessions a week. One of these evenings will be a repeat of the beginners’ course, while the other will be an intermediate course, which is also currently being developed from scratch by our dedicated intern.

This has only be possible with your support. Thank you for continuing to believe in our program.

All the best

GVI Quepos

Links:

http://www.gvi.org

Permalink

Jul 2, 2014
Community Development Profiling

By Sophie Birkett | Head of Operations, Charitable Trust

Dear Supporter,

In early 2014, GVI interns and staff initiated a community needs assessment where a small amount of Cocal residence were interviewed about life in Cocal, as well as educational, financial and medical concerns. As part of this, the profiling of the area also included a needs assessment whereby residents discussed what they believed the community needed. Whilst a far cry from the main issues facing the community, one of the aspects volunteers where able to assist with was the request for adult education. In April 2014, various volunteers got together to plan a six week adult english program that is now currently running on Wednesday evenings at the local school. The initiative is proving a success with more and more adults signing up throughout the course.

So far the program has covered basic greetings and leave takings, basic conversation, days of the week, numbers and the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’. This week marks the 4th week of the program and we plan to spend the next 2 weeks looking at basic work conversation that may assist them in gaining employment in the tourist mecca of Quepos. What is also important however, is that in teaching adults at Cocal, we hope that they may then be able to go home and practice English with their children.

The program runs every Wednesday evening for an hour and a half and offers a free creche service for parents with young children. Previous attempts to run Adult English classes at Cocal have often failed due to peoples inability to commit with work and childcare restraints. The evening classes, along with the free childcare service in the GVI Aula has proved to be a great incentive for parents who would otherwise be unable to attend, and we often have just as many kids come for the creche as we do the English class. The response from the program by both the community and volunteers has been extremely positive and we are hoping that we will be able to continue with follow up six week programs after this, perhaps even offering various level options for the students who may wish to continue.

Thank you for continuing to support this project.

All the best

GVI Quepos

Links:

http://www.gvi.org

Permalink

Apr 21, 2014
Reading and tutoring in the new classroom

By Sophie Birkett | Head of Operations, Charitable Trust

Volunteer helping grade 5 student with his reading

Dear Supporter,

One of our major achievements last year thanks to donations was the refurbishment of our new room, turning it from a storage area to a fully functional classroom/library. One of our major drives since the start of the school year has been to utilise this new space as effectively as possible and this has been done with great results.

Last year we were able to begin a reading program with some of the younger students that was showing good progress and thanks to the new space we have been able to continue this program and make improvements to it. Many of the students we worked with last year still need help and often on an individual basis. Thanks to our dedicated GVI volunteers we have been able to give the local teachers assistance in gauging the levels of the students and then improving those levels, both in English, Maths and Spanish. Literacy levels in Costa Rica are among the highest in the developing world with approximately 96% literacy in people over 15 years old but this is not always the case in isolated communities like El Cocal. Many of the students do not read and write as well as they should be able to and it holds them back with everything they do at school. In addition to this their parents may also not be literate, which severely reduces the amount of help they can expect out of school. Having GVI volunteers on hand to help with this can be invaluable.

So far we have been working mainly with grades 2 and 5 but as the year progresses we are getting more requests for help from other teachers and we are, as always, delighted to be able to help our partners to achieve their own goals. One teacher came to us last week to particularly thank the volunteers for their work with one of her grade 1 students. She hadn’t expected to see results so quickly and such a marked improvement. The students are also very excited about their extra classes and the chance to improve as well as the chance to spend time with the volunteers who are always popular in the school and the volunteers love the opportunity to get to know individual students and see real improvement from them over quite a short time.

We look forward to seeing continued progress from the students and hopefully the opportunity to work with more of the students over the course of the year.

Many thanks

GVI Manuel Antonio

Links:

http://www.gvi.org

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.