Outreach Project: English Camp For Remote Children was a Success!

Why We Launched This Project?

Most of us are privileged to having learned English at a young age making us capable of communicating effectively in a language that can be understood by most people in the world. Unfortunately, this privilege is not accessible in remote areas of Asian countries like Thailand. Aside from having not enough money to send their children to school, their local language has completely different set of alphabets, phonetics, grammar and structure so learning English is so challenging that even Thai teachers who are teaching English for years still have difficulty in English language. As someone coming from the Philippines, I struggled a lot to learn Thai language due to its massive difference from the language I'm used to.

Hence we, the students of VISTEC in collaboration with student affairs department, decided to create a project that aims to give these kids a chance to learn English by launching English Camps in remote areas.

Our Activities

The kids were provided with a transportation service to pick them up from far away villages to our camp location. Upon arrival, foods and drinks were provided to boost their energy throughout the day. Coming from poor places, some of them even had their burger for the first time and we're glad they enjoyed it.

After snack time, we started doing some activities to let them know each other. We taught them how to introduce themselves and meet other friends in English. We then divided them into groups and played some games that would allow them to interact with each other to gain new friends. After that, we introduced them new songs which allowed them to enjoy learning simple vocabulary words while singing and dancing.

Teaching them new words especially those that ends in "s" and those that starts with "v" is a big challenge since those sounds are not present in Thai language. Nevertheless, it is very fulfilling once you get them to pronounce those words correctly.

We then taught them the English words for the common parts of the body such as eyes, nose, mouth, hair, head, shoulder, and many more then we made an activity called "Draw My Face" where they must draw the face of their friends.

After the 2-day camp, we reviewed and summarised everything that we have taught them and we're amazed by how well they can remember the things we taught them. Indeed, there's a difference when you learn while you enjoy.

Before the camp ended, we distributed some school supplies such as notebook, pencil, eraser, pen, crayons, glue, scissors and toy which would help them unleash their creativity and further develop what we have taught them.

The Joy of Helping Others

Doing outreach programs is never easy, but at the end of the day, the overwhelming joy of being able to touch other people's lives is more than enough reason to continue what we're doing. These kids have somehow became part of our family and we're hoping that through our simple English camp, we were able to give them something that they will take with them for the rest of their lives.

Let this be a constant reminder that small acts of kindness do make a huge difference.

Next Activity

We are planning to perform this activity in other locations to reach out more kids. Furthermore, this Saturday (Jan 13, 2018) marks the celebration of Children's day in Thailand. In this regard, we are planning to arrange another outreach program to help kids by providing educational activities and provide repair service to school facilities such as playground and library.

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