Sreylin shares her story.

 A recent JWOC Graduate, Sreylin Chum, shares the experiences she had whilst volunteering for four years in JWOC’s Free Classes Project.  In this post she discusses the knowledge she gained, the opportunities it provided, and her future goals and aspirations. To find out more about JWOC’s Scholarship Programme click here

  I had been teaching many different children and adults classes while I was volunteering at JWOC. From what I remember, I had been teaching both children and adults classes for about three years and only adult classes for the last year before I graduated from university. It means, I had been teaching in Free Classes project at JWOC for the whole four years at university.

I have learnt quite a lot from my volunteering at JWOC such as, teaching skills/ techniques, lesson planning for children and adults class, time and classroom management, students monitoring and controlling and student’s error correction especially using student centre approach etc. Besides direct teaching, I had been attending almost every teacher development workshop so that I have absorbed a lot of knowledge related to teaching. I believe it was vital. Moreover, I know how to use teaching resources and create games, extra activities and materials and interact with my students very well.

I feel that four years teaching English experience at JWOC is fantastic because it could turn me to be a professional teacher plus I studied English at university so it has helped me to improve my English and my teaching a lot before graduating. I also wanted to volunteer with other projects at JWOC, just time flied so I couldn’t change or volunteer with the different project. Anyway, I was so glad to be a teacher at JWOC. I love teaching students at JWOC very much because it was the best memory. I cannot describe how much love JWOC and I have learnt from JWOC because it is more than you can say or tell.

Now, I am working as a coordinator for young adult preparation and integration program at Anjali House in Siem Reap.

By volunteering at JWOC, it definitely makes a big change to my life and helps me find a better job. Without volunteering experiences at JWOC, I would not be able to work in my position today. Now, with my work I teach life skills and English to young adults so it is a great opportunity for me to use the knowledge I have gained from volunteering at JWOC and at university.

My dream is to run a small NGO, providing all the children in the countryside the same opportunities to access to their education in order to help reduce the illiteracy in Cambodia or I want to work in the international non- profit organization for my future job.

JWOC is an amazing place to train me to be a professional teacher and give students the same opportunities to study. I can say that, JWOC gives me everything I do have now and I won’t be able to forget JWOC and what JWOC has provided me especially, I had made many friends and helped teaching hundreds of students. Gaining and Sharing at the same time at JWOC, Isn’t it marvelous?

All in all, I would like to appreciate for all support from JWOC and I personally believe that JWOC always makes a difference! With a great slogan “See a problem, solve a problem”.

By Sreylin Chum