By Tom Rosen | Co-Director/Project Manager
Since our last report to you, we have continued to support the educational needs of the youth of Koung Jor refugee camp. Your generous donation has helped us pay the wages of the dedicated local teachers who work hard to pass on their knowledge and expertise to the younger generations. Ensuring that local teachers are paid does not only reward them for their time but also provides an incentive to those they teach to one day step into their shoes and help bring vital lessons into this marginalised community such as computer classes, and English and Burmese language classes.
We have not only provided wages to the teachers but also another training. Last month, we held our second teacher training session which this time focused on lesson planning. This allows the teachers to design lessons which not only bring new topics into fruition but also enables them to make the classes more interactive and fun using some of the classroom activities they learnt about in the previous teacher training session which took place last October.
Sai Leng, the camp headman who also teaches English and Burmese, explained the following to us:
"As some of the teaching materials we have are old, it can sometimes be hard to keep the attention of the students, however with knowing how to attain our goal of each lesson we teach along with activities that keep the students actively learning in class and giving them an opportunity to interact with what is taught means that we can overcome the restraints of a low-resource environment".
Some local monks even joined the training as they were about to teach and take part in the annual Shan Culture summer school in which children learn about the Shan language, heritage and buddhist practises. This is very important to the community as many children were born and brought up in the refugee camp in Thailand. This therefore secures the future of their culture and gives a sense of belonging to people who have suffered persecution and discrimination throughout their lives. We hope to provide you with some photos of the Shan culture summer school in our next report to you.
This project is eligible for matching donations from GlobalGiving on the 14th April making your donation go that much further, so if you would like to share information about this project amongst your friends and family, now is the perfect time to do so.
With sincere gratitude,
Tom Rosen and The Branch Foundation Team
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