Project: English Resource Room

After twenty months of teaching, struggling with the language, and varying progress with teachers and students, it’s good to get a solid, stable project going, where I can help leave a mark on the Gumlag school, my place of work since December ’09.

It’s been an interesting journey, and I’m honestly very proud of my counterparts and students, who’ve been so good to me and have done what I asked. I just like being in a place where everyone’s familiar with one another (I suppose that’s not difficult here.), where I’m respected. It feels good to take on this project to, in the least, say thanks to those who’ve put up with me for so long.

Let me describe what we have going here: an English resource room that’ll occupy one of the second floor classrooms in our lower school building. My mom and dad have been there. It’s where we had a couple conversation clubs the afternoon they visited the school. My good friend Jordan Macha also saw it one day, when I wrote fratty sayings on the new chalkboard. And Carly Edgington, my old AZ5 friend, also participated in a club or two there last summer.

I’ve spent a lot of time here, and so the opportunity to fill some shelves with grammar and storybooks and set up a T.V. and D.V.D. player with some English movies is a great one, one that’ll surely be appreciated by Gumlag’s three hundred something students and four English teachers. Heck, I’ll love it while I’m still here, as I’m dying for some new books to teach these young folks.

It should be an excellent finished project, but here’s the kicker. You see, the funding is coming from a program called Peace Corps Partnership, an organized way to solidify donations from folks back home. Folks like…well…you, the reader. Yeah, I’m also asking for money, if you’d like to donate. Any contribution to reach our $1380 goal would mean so much to us.

You can get more details at the project website: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=314-073

If that link doesn’t work, just go to peacecorps.gov/donate, and search for “Gahan”. At the website, you can read more about the project and donate, if you want. However, despite what the description says, we won’t be doing room repairs with the grant money, as there isn’t enough room in the budget to do that.

Whether you’d like to donate or not, check out the website to learn a little more about our project. I’m excited about it, and I enjoy sharing the idea with those that’re interested. Thanks a lot for your interest and support of our work.