By Sophie Birkett | Head of Operations, Charitable Trust
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
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