By Matthew Williams-Spooner | International Volunteer
A lot of exciting things have happened at Half Day School (HDS) since our last report. Our crops have been harvested to support the lunch program, Carol House has been refurbished to prepare for a new community development program, and the kids have been studying hard and welcomed two more English teachers to the centre – one new and one old. We’d like to let you know more about them all and what they mean for HDS and the children it takes care of.
In the last report, we told you that HDS’s rice fields had been cultivated with the help of the kids. We waited 4 months for the rice to grow, and in November we successfully harvested 300kg of rice. This rice will support HDS’s lunch program by providing meals for the kids, and will also provide a great opportunity for the kids to develop life skills that will help them live safe, independent lives in the future. Importantly, this achievement also builds on HDS’s ability to be self-sustaining. This is especially critical since, although we are deeply grateful for everyone’s generous support, we know that we can’t be overly dependent on outside support, and want to use people’s generosity to build for the future as well as maintain for the present.
The kids have been working really hard in their classes, and have welcomed 2 new English teachers to HDS in the last month. They’ve started giving the kids weekly pop quizzes, and although the kids weren’t ecstatic about the idea at first, they’ve done extremely well so far, with lots of scores in the 90s and not a single fail! The kids have also been doing a pen pal project, coordinated by one of the new volunteers, and have been sending letters with people from Australia, the US, Mexico, Panama and England. Everyone has really enjoyed the experience, especially the kids, many of whom have never had the chance to speak with anyone so far away before. One girl, using very polite Thai language to convey respect and indicate that they think of their pen pal as their older brother, even said that they “think about and miss [their pen pal] a lot between receiving and sending letters each week, and really love that [their pen pal] speaks about real things and tells them about themselves.”
With Christmas already past this week and New Year’s Eve almost upon us, the kids and the centre are preparing for a short break during which everyone will spend time with their families. We’ll all be back into the swing of things at HDS on Monday the 4th of January, and we’re looking forward to what the next year has in store. We know that there remains a lot of work to do, and we’re more grateful to our supporters than we can fully describe, but we here at HDS feel very optimistic about the future and hope you’ll be with us to take it on together. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Links:
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.
