Holding English Camps regularly not only gives us an opportunity to improve our English programmes but also helps us make Yaowawit a lot closer to a bilingual school. Today we hosted 50 grade-1-and-2 students and their teachers from Muang Phuket Municipal School. The school brought its students to Yaowawit’s English Camp to expose them as early as possible to intensive but fun English learning experience with our English speaking international teachers.

This Yaowawit’s English learning experience is a combination of outdoor, creative and interactive activities, such as games, painting, sing along and farm tours. To make these young students familiar with the activities, selected Yaowawit’s students from Grades 4, 5 and 6 also joined them. In the games sessions, the students played hula hoops, balloons step-on and overboards stand-on. They also enjoyed drawing, graphic clippings and stone painting alongside origami and colour impressions.

In the farm, the students were introduced to renewable energy with solar panels, pollution prevention in groundwater and various crops in our permaculture programme. Additionally, they got to feed happy goats and chickens that we farm only for milk and eggs.

Because this 2-to-3-day English camp brings immense benefit for our students, who continually meet new friends to practice English with, we are inviting other schools from nearby provinces around Phang Nga to join us. If your school is also interested, please contact us at info@yaowawit.org.

A group of 21 Hong Kong International School students joined Yaowawit this week. The group took part in class activities as teachers, becoming role models for Yaowawit’s children. Setting aside their smartphones, HKIS students immersed themselves fully in their activities.

Their first activities with the children started the first evening after they arrived at Yaowawit. The evening activities, consisting of reading and fun games with the children, continued every night during their stay. Other activities were in classrooms where HKIS students helped teach various lessons. Additionally, they also renovated the playground and built a new stair platform and a climbing net for the children. For outside-school trips, HKIS students took jungle trekking, water rafting, seafood BBQ, local market exploration and beach picnics.

HKIS has sent Yaowawit a group of students every year. This year’s visit was organised by Teachers Meredith and Brian. Teacher Meredith, having been here before, helped give the HKIS group a tour in the farm. This time, the farm was rather quiet, as she noticed, because we needed to focus on the recovery construction of Yaowawit’s landslide. But, in the coming year, the farm will have greenhouse, garden house and other permaculture projects ready for students’ outdoor learning experience. Therefore, we are excited to welcome HKIS groups again.

Primary Grades 4-6

Grades 4-6 visited Phang Nga Museum. The museum not only displayed historical buildings but also introduced the children to contemporary lessons like aquaculture and coastal preservation. These lessons were obvious on the next destination, which was a fishing village.

Ban Bang Phat is a Muslim’s fishing village. Famous for restaurants by the sea, the village has farmed crabs, shrimps and other sea creatures in family-run ponds. Moreover, the village has managed to keep the coastline intact from the expanding sea, because for generations the communities here have maintained a healthy population of mangroves. In appreciation of the local communities, the children walked on an open beach by the village, collected any plastic debris and planted some trees.

Primary Grades 1-3

The next day, grades 1-3 did similar events on their trips as grades 4-6 did.

Kindergartens

However, the kindergartens’ trip was different. They learned about animals at Phang Nga Zoo and monkeys at the Suwannakhuha Temple cave. Afterwards, they swam in a downstream of Wang Khiang Koo Waterfall and played sand on Bang Sak Beach.

Sponsoring Trips

Overall, the school trips have made the children very happy and appreciative of the nature and communities they have visited. These trips were sponsored by our donors and partners. If you want to sponsor our children’s trips to specific educational destinations, please contact us at sponsoring@yaowawit.org.

Today we celebrated the graduation of 14 primary grade 6 students. It was our proud moment to see them completing their education successfully and ready for junior high. It was also our most grateful moment for all of you who have continuously supported these children along the way.

Apparent among you today was Marriott Hotel. Three years ago, Marriott partnered with us to build Yaowawit Pre-vocational Academies and has since taught Yaowawit’s children various skills in hospitality management. These Marriott’s teachers and staff were at this ceremony and marked our children’s achievement with tree planting. In addition to Marriott, the children were also thankful to Mr Paul who donated food and beverages for the whole ceremony.

The graduation ceremony was however just one phase of life for these children. The next phase will be junior high school at Kapong Pittayakom, while they continue to live at Yaowawit. As these children are growing up, they need your support much more now than ever before. Therefore, whenever you want to support these particular graduates, please contact us at sponsoring@yaowawit.org. You can make these disadvantaged children happy, worthy adults–and help them break the circle of poverty they were born into.