Grace House

I'm volunteering at Grace House again this year - was here last year when it was still called GCDC (Globalteer Community Development Centre)

Grace House's motto is

"Enabling the community to become sustainable through education, family support and health care."

It provides free English language and General studies education to around 200 children from villages on the outskirts of Siem Reap.Children attend for either a morning or afternoon session from 9-11 or 1-3. It also runs adult education classes in the morning and evening in English. From september they will be running an electrical school and wood turning classes. The school employs Khmer (local) teachers who are supported by volunteers. Volunteers are in charge of the general education programme and they assist with the English lessons taught by the Khmer staff.

When I was at Grace House last year it was a small school with two (and a bit) classrooms and about 100 children. During my time there work had begun on the third classroom and they were sorting out a new intake of children. There was a tiny office and a small and overfilled storeroom. The children were lovely and a pleasure to teach - very enthusiastic and willing to learn.

Just over a year later I returned to Grace House, I couldn't believe the change and development that had happened in such a short space of time. The children were still as sweet and eager to learn as ever and the school hasn't lost its friendly, community feel but it has expanded.

They have finished the classroom I saw the start of and have built three others - including a classroom for preschool. They have also built an electrical workshop and wood-turning classroom, there are now paths between each of the buildings and a new toilet block is almost finished. There is also a proper office with lots of storage space and a medical room. There are plans to use one of the classrooms as a library and computer room and they are looking into the costs of internet for the school (prohibitively high at the moment). Work has just started on a proper football pitch aswell. There are a group of local women who come for an hour everymorning to learn weaving and earn some money making bags and hammocks which Grace House sells in shops in town.

There is now almost double the number of khmer staff employed by the school and all of the staff who were there last year are still there. I'm really pleased that the teacher I'm working with at the moment was a volunteer at the school last year and is now employed as a teacher.

Its so brilliant to come back to somewhere after a year and find that Grace House has developed so much, without losing the sense of what it is. The development has been fantastically organised and its obvious that money spent is carefully considered and organised in the children's best interests. They make very good use of their volunteers and the khmer staff are always keen to take on board new ideas for their teaching. Hopefully I'll be able to make it back next year!!

I have uploaded an album of photos showing the changes in the past year with some information about them as it needs to be seen to be believed.