Quality Education & Public Health In Thailand

Introduction

At last, the end of 2022 saw some normality resume to education institutions around the world, allowing our community programme to run classes consistently,  increasing impact through our local schools and providing our students with some stability and structure to develop their language skills and confidence without interruption.

Project Outcomes 

The delivery of our English education and health awareness classes in our local community has continued to run consistently and with huge improvements in students' English level and confidence. The benefit of a prolonged period of time with uninterrupted class schedules, (e.g. the end of the COVID-19 pandemic) has really begun to show. Classes and year groups across the board have shown high marks in end of semester exams and dramatic differences in confidence levels since the start of semester.

In our local community, conversational English classes have continued to be a huge success as participants attend classes regularly and new students join every week, as feedback from our classes spreads by word of mouth in the community. One member of our adult class programme has recently opened up her own business in the local community, owing to the confidence gained from her English classes and her new ability to communicate clearly with passing tourists during the busy high season. This is a great new opportunity for this student who is very grateful to our teachers for her greatly improved level of English.

In the last months of the year we piloted a new style of adult English education, upon request of a local business wanting to improve their employees' English level. This 10 week block with 20 hours of teaching has been a huge success showing positive feedback all round  from students, volunteers and the employer. As requested by the business owner, we have started the next 10 week course to build on the progress made in the initial classes.

At the end of the year we celebrated with one of our local schools through a special alumni/reunion event. Past students from the school joined together with teachers new and old to share stories and catch up on old memories. It was a pleasure to hear that so many of our past students have gone on to continue their education further or have successfully gained employment in stable jobs in the tourism industry and now have access to a better quality of life.

During this quarter we have been able to support our wider community with over 400 health checks completed alongside health, hygiene and wellbeing workshops at three different schools. We have covered topics that include dental hygiene, nutrition and diet, wellbeing, hand washing and exercise.

Challenges and Solutions for 2023

With the continued support of our partners and donors there are several challenges we would like to address as we move into the start of 2023.

To improve our impact in 2023 our community programme would greatly benefit from the addition of access to better resources and equipment for both our English classes and health awareness workshops. This would include more scales, health monitoring equipment and classroom resources (crafts, pens, whiteboards, flash cards and lamination).

This year we would also like to launch an IT literacy programme, to improve employment opportunities and access to further education. Additional laptops and workshops would provide our local community with equal access to these opportunities.

Finally we would like to increase the number of field trips we can run to all of our educational projects, broadening the horizons of all our students.

Summary

We are grateful for your ongoing support to continue our work in our local community in working towards SDG Goals 3 and 4 at this critical time. This year has seen some huge milestones accomplished within our long term project plan, something we hope to expand on in the coming year.

We respectfully ask for your continued support towards the Quality Education and Public Health in Thailand projects.