TravelAid at JWOC Free Classes - August 2009

One of the main roles of the Travelaid team was to help the many scholarship students at JWOC with their free English teaching classes. JWOC helps coordinate 20 English classes throughout the week. Classes of around 25 students are held in 3 separate classrooms (2 at JWOC, 1 at Wat Chork). With an eleven strong team, we were lucky to have both a weekday class (four, one hour classes a week) and a weekend class (2, 2 hour classes) each.

Before arriving at JWOC, we were all really nervous about the English teaching – despite all attending a TEFL course! To our delight, we soon discovered that we wouldn’t actually be teaching on our own, but assisting the permanent teachers here, the Khmer scholarship students. We were encouraged by Andrew and Camilla to help the Khmer teachers make the lessons more student focused. In government schools here, children learn their English largely through copying sentences from the board and repeating set words and phrases. The most genuine English conversation they can share is with tourists who rarely venture out of the centre of Siem Reap or from the Angkor temples. We wanted to make the classes much more interactive with fun games and role plays to help get them using their English in more natural conversations with each other and find new, exciting ways to help them remember vocabulary and sentence structures.

I think the Travelaid team all had different experiences with their classes depending on the confidence of the teacher or the age of the class. Many of us with adult classes found that students were incredibly motivated and would often ask us questions that we struggled to answer. I’d often have to ask other members of the team for ideas on how to explain the many ridiculous rules we have in English! The ‘adult’ students, ranging from 13-25, find four hours (on top of school studies and work) in their week to focus on their English and hopefully improve their job prospects not just in the tourist industry but in finance, law and management. I’d struggle to believe that teenagers in England would voluntarily give up so much time and be as enthusiastic and focused as these guys are. Their enthusiasm to learn made the experience of teaching incredibly rewarding and encouraged us all to dedicate many more hours thinking up new ways to make the most of our lesson time and our teaching much more effective.

I personally found teaching the younger kids a lot harder. They were still very used to being talked at and many seemed to struggle much more when asked direct questions or were encouraged to write on the board or talk in English in front of their peers. They loved the games though especially when divided into teams and made to compete against each other to first discover the correct spelling of a new word or complete gaps in a sentence for example.

The majority of our team found the scholarship student teachers incredibly receptive to these new approaches, many scholarship students had already used games in classes. However there were a few teachers who, perhaps being a bit more shy or stretched for time, took a bit longer to come round to suggestions for their classes. It was tricky sometimes to encourage the teacher to actually conduct the game themselves rather than getting the volunteer to lead the game as one segment of the lesson before they returned to the usual style of teaching for the rest of the lesson. We’ve been working to ensure that our efforts here will not die off the minute we leave Siem Reap. The aim was always to find methods of teaching that the scholarship students themselves believed to be effective and would feel confident to continue after we left. We had neither the experience nor the intention to take over the class, teach for a month and then head home with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Some members of our team have built up an activities ideas folder which we hope students will return to occasionally when planning their classes.

Some of us were also very fortunate to have our very own class at the weekends. This was sadly due to one of the scholarship student teachers being involved in a motorbike accident (apparently a really common occurrence here in Cambodia). At first, we were incredibly nervous to be leading a two hour class, but quickly found our adult students to be very welcoming and helped us along even when we couldn’t answer their questions! We tried to focus on practicing pronunciation and writing since these seemed to be the two areas where students really struggled – punctuation and many of our English sounds are completely new to the Khmer students so take lots of practice. We also took time over areas we thought to be most useful, such as food and drink which we thought would be relevant for those working in restaurants. Stumbling blocks soon arose when trying to explain the concept of toast, jam or pasta! Once we leave, another volunteer will fortunately be here to carry on the classes until the scholarship student teacher recovers fully.

Many members of our team also found it beneficial for the lessons (and really lovely for us!) to spend separate time working with the scholarship student teacher. Many of the scholarship students have had little opportunity to practice their own English outside of the classroom. It was so nice to take time to sit and chat about family, our ambitions and the differences between our lives and cultures. The students are largely of the same age as us and at a similar point at university, making decisions about where they want to work and what they hope to achieve. We started an afternoon drop in session for any students (whether scholarship students or not) to come and chat with us and practice their English. Some of our team started daily, one hour, individual classes with their teacher where we would work on the pronunciation of certain sounds and practiced by reading aloud newspaper articles and stories. We also had lots of opportunities to see the students socially such as at Sunday, movie nights, during our extra curricular activity sessions during the week or whilst working on the well or microfinance projects. As the teachers got to know us as a team outside of the classroom, they seemed a lot less self conscious during their lessons, more relaxed and more confident to enact our ideas for the lessons.

The scholarship students here at JWOC really are incredible. They put so much time and effort into their lessons and improving their own English alongside their degrees which range from English Literature (reading Shakespeare and Austen!) to Law, Finance and Management, it was such a pleasure to work with them and feed off their energy! We were all really relieved and encouraged by how receptive the students were to us. I’m not sure how keen I’d be if someone walked into my classroom and started voicing their opinions! But the students were always so open and warm, allowing us a snapshot into their lives which has made this experience so much more personal. They have given us so much advice about bargaining in the town, which temples to visit and food to try. We were lucky to share a real Cambodian BBQ with some of the teachers and a few of us went out clubbing to a full on Khmer club and drove to watch sunrise at Ta Prohm!

I think we’ve also all been overwhelmed by how hard the Khmer people work here; often putting in 3 hours of work in the field before breakfast, working in hotels and shops to provide an income, studying at university and still turning up at JWOC with the kind of smile and enthusiasm that we volunteers worked to muster over our toast every morning. The atmosphere here is one that encourages strong friendships and devotion to the education of the students that return here day after day. I think we will all struggle to say our goodbyes.

Hannah Perry

West Point Cadets Volunteer AIAD experience in Siem Reap - Neil

In the summer of 2008, I spent three weeks in Siem Reap with Journeys Within Our Community. Working as a member of an eight-person team, I volunteered with a number of JWOC projects, including the Clean Water Project, the Village Microfinance Fund, and the English Language schools provided by JWOC at Wat Thmei and Wat Chork. The Journeys Within Our Community program afforded me the opportunity to explore a foreign country, immerse in a culture far removed from my own, and meet an exciting and motivated group of people, while at the same time participating in a rewarding and productive volunteer project. During my time with JWOC, I participated in one of the most innovative and exciting projects I could have imagined, a complete immersion in the nearby Veal Village for a forty-eight hour period. Our group was split up into two groups of four, with my group assigned to Veal Village and the other group assigned to nearby Tropeangses Village. These villages exist on the extreme edge of sustainable poverty, they are truly struggling to survive and provide a better life for their children on a daily basis. Each group was synched with an interpreter, and provided with bottled water and a food resupply plan. Within the villages, each group was further split, with two to three person teams pairing up with a village family for two days. My family, a multi-generational family of five, was extremely accommodating and gave me new insight into the mindset of the local people.

While living in Veal Village, my group was tasked with conducting oral hygiene training, an extremely rewarding project as we distributed toothbrushes and toothpaste provided by another JWOC contributor, and taught the village children how to brush their teeth, hopefully instilling a beneficial life-long habit. In addition, with the help of our interpreters, we walked throughout the village, talking to dozens of families and almost one hundred school-age children. We conducted a survey designed to gauge interest in free English classes at the new JWOC Community Center, the classes being one of JWOC’s many exciting upcoming projects. The results of the survey allowed us to glimpse the importance of education for the village children, many want to attend classes, but currently cannot because of the costs associated with government schools and their responsibilities at home. By providing free classes nearby, Journeys Within Our Community will aid these children by helping them escape the cycle of poverty currently existing in Veal Village, and I felt like I really was helping JWOC help the kids succeed.

In addition to an interesting and rewarding volunteer experience, JWOC provided a great overall Cambodian experience. The staff and all of the personnel were extremely helpful, Jesse and Melissa were awesome to work with, providing direction and resources while still allowing the eight of us to work together to solve complex problems and work to improve the JWOC projects. The scholarship students, interpreters, and especially the monks at Wat Chork were all incredible, and working with all of them made the trip one of the best experiences I have had. I’m excited to see what is in store for JWOC in the future, with such a solid foundation I believe they will continue to be extremely successful in providing benefit to the local community and volunteers alike.

- Neil Mittel

July 2008

West Point Cadets Volunteer AIAD experience in Siem Reap - Sung-Yong David Kim

JWOC has provided me the opportunity to not only travel to Cambodia, but to help others in need. The experience has been both exciting and eye-opening. Everyday I would learn something new about the people or the culture of Cambodia. I came to Cambodia not knowing anything about the people or their history, but after the missions set out before me by JWOC, I was able to interact with the people and learn so much more than I expected.

Some of the missions I participated in was surveying young "recycle" children and to raise an interest in a free education program for these children. I spent the afternoons aiding local university students in teaching English at a local school. It was amazing to see how the students were always eager to learn more, even the university volunteers. To them English is a necessary tool for success as the need for English speaking Cambodians are never-ending. The best mission yet was to live and immerse myself amongst a squatter village. I spent 2 days with a host family, and spent the mornings and evenings surveying the village looking for ways to improve the living conditions and lifestyle of these people. It was definitely a challenge as I was not used to sleeping and living in such poor conditions. However, through that experience, I felt a stronger urge to help the people as most of them work from dawn till dusk yet they only make a total of 3-4 dollars a day. Their meals are very meager and the children play in sewage. One cannot help but feel sorry for the people. Yet, the people live their lives with such perseverance that they were inspiring.

However, JWOC also made arrangements for me to view the breathtaking temples and learn the history of Cambodia through very knowledgeable guides. The accommodations at the Bed and Breakfast was a little unexpected as it is very modern and in no ways uncomfortable. I was able to try the Khmer food and visit the local markets. My travel in Cambodia was at no point dull as there was always something to do and something new to experience.

West Point Cadets Volunteer AIAD experience in Siem Reap - Owen

I came to Cambodia through the summer academic trips program that West Point has. I knew that I wanted to do a service trip in a faraway foreign country. I would say that I was a little disappointed with the amount of work which we got to participate in, but some of the blame for that could be placed on my own lack of initiative.

One experience that I found very valuable was the 48 hours that we spent in a poor local village. It was interesting to be able to catch a greater glimpse of the life of the people in this village, who do not even have a right to the own land on which they build their homes. I was inspired by the level of dignity and grace that some of the families brought to what appeared to us a desperate situation. Getting to know those families has been my best experience in Cambodia.

I also enjoyed teaching at the language school. The dedication of the students to learn English and improve their lives was impressive, the grace and cheer with which they went about it was inspiring for me.

This is the fifth time that I have had a voluntourism type experience, and I love it every time. I think that the people of Cambodia are the most genuinely kind people of a country that I have ever met. JWOC really seems to be making an impact on the local community, but what is more important is that despite having found ways to help people on a large scale, they still have a touching personal feeling for individual hardships that individuals and families go through, and do their best to help people live joyful lives.

West Point Cadets Volunteer AIAD experience in Siem Reap - Andrew

I came to JWOC with very little understanding of Cambodia as a whole, what the situation was like in Siem Reap, or what to expect from the volunteer program here. After spending more than two weeks working with JWOC and its various programs, I will say that it is one of the most interesting and valuable experiences I’ve ever had. Coming from a military background, I didn’t quite understand how an NGO did business or how one could impact a community in need. Teaching English classes at Wat Chork, seeing micro finance in action, and embedding into the Weal squatter village for 48 hours broadened my horizons and afforded me a greater well of experiences on which to fall back.

Journeys Within Our Community is a very effective organization that is continually expanding its outreach into Siem Reap and other Southeast Asian countries. I was impressed with both the permanent staff and the corps of volunteer scholarship students that aid the programs. The amount of difference that a small donation to JWOC can make in Cambodia is astounding. Resources used effectively are allowing many Cambodians crammed into the edges of emerging tourist destination Siem Reap to break out of the cycle of poverty that gripes the majority of the populace here. I honestly feel that my time helping with JWOC’s programs has made a difference in many people’s lives and that JWOC as an organization will continue to do so in the future.