Teacher Blog

Charity May 2011

Hello everyone

It's ben a really busy few months and I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported the charity activities.

We have been working closely with Thang Long Vocational School, which was founded in 1994 and sponsored by Saigon Children's Charity, Thang Long Vocational School provides free classes in English and vocational skills to the children of District 4 in Saigon. A member of the Thang Long staff interviews the parents of prospective students, aged eleven to thirteen, in their home. The family must pass a means test before the student is accepted into the school. Children from the poorest families are accepted. I particularly enjoyed attending the opening ceremony for the new courses and being on the judging panel for the student's displays.

The little sisters from Thang Long are having a great time and recently enjoyed 'Pancake Night" where they learnt how to flip a pancake and shared cooking experiences with the volunteer teachers. We now run two seperate sisters groups on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

Everyone had a great time when we invited the children and helpers from Smile shelter for HIV sufferers to join us at Apollo for music night. The children started the evening by singing some traditional vietnamese songs to us, followed by a guitar and solo, then the Apollo teachers stood up to introduce the children to some ESL songs. It was so much fun that even thouh it was scheduled to finish at 8.30pm we were all still singing at 10pm!

The Apollo scholorship student is doing very well. She is eight years old and has attended all of her Starter A classes without fail. Last week she learnt how to ask and answer..'How old are you?'. She hopes to learn enough english to get a job and support her only remaining family - her mother who is mentally ill and has polio.

Several of our male teachers dressed as ladies after they had sold an hour of their time to raise charity funds. This provided us with enough cash to pay for 5 students to attend school, otherwise they would have had to work with their parents and earn as little as 20,000VND per day. We are committed to supporting them for two years, and hope to suport more children in the future.

Finally, the photography competition is now closed and we will begin exhibitions next month. More details will follow soon.

If you'd like to get involved you have many options including volunteering at schools, mentoring, writing lesson plans for volunteer teachers, and taking part in activity days or even fundreaising. Contact: tracey.roper@apollo.edu.vn