1.

Project action: Teaching English to disadvantaged children in the remote areas of Thai
Nguyen, Viet Nam.

2. Project summary (5-10 sentences): Where, What, When, Why and How?
In recent years, with the current trend of integration and development, Thai Nguyen
has been attracting many big investments at many fields like policy, society, education
and economy. However, in some remote areas, the economy has not been improved.
Consequently, there are many poor families. This leads to the disadvantages of many
children. They are considered to be the main work force of their family. They have to
work hard like adults. Besides, they have never been benefited any modern facilities
like children in the city. Their parents cannot afford them to take extra-class, especially
for English classes.

The more developing the society is, the more important the role of English is.
Having a good English will give all people more chances to get a good job and we really
want to do something to help poor children in those remote areas in Thai Nguyen learn
English. After a long time studying, we are ready to implement a project named
“Teaching English to disadvantaged children in the remote areas of Thai Nguyen, Viet
Nam”.

Our project aims at nurturing their passion for English and in the long run to improve
their life. At first step, we are training a team of EFL students with essential skills in
teaching and interacting with children. Then, from 2012, June, we will officially
implement this project. This will be a good time for us to carry out this project because
children are totally free from school in the summer. There will be 3 periods of
Teaching English collaborating with organizing activities every week. And we will
provide them with not only everything related to English lessons but also variety of
activities they have never known before. In addition, we will share a part of their
difficulties with them. And the most important thing is that we will help them build and
carry out beautiful dreams in their life. We hope that after a long time being taught by
us, they will have a strong passion in English and this will be a good motivation for
them to learn better. As a result, they will try and try more for their future. And if the
project gets good results, we will continue implementing this project in larger areas in
Viet Nam. We are young and we want to make our charity dreams come true. We want
to create a new trend in volunteer work for all Vietnamese students.

3. Investigation:
a. Community needs:

According to the latest report of World Bank on the situation of poverty in Vietnam, 73
percent of people who live in remote and rural areas, especially for farmers who
cultivates rice account for 94 percent of poverty in Vietnam. In such areas, people are
not well-educated and they lead nomadic lives, so they are really disadvantaged and do
need help from the community. Especially, statistics report shows that in the period of
2001-2003, there were 13.8 millions of mal-nutritious children in Vietnam. Simply, the
more underdeveloped the economy is, the lower living-condition is. They cannot
 prepare a good and nutritious meal, and they cannot create a good environment for
their children to learn, too. Many poor children cannot join in extra classes and a great
amount of them have to leave school very early and this is a signal for a future which is
as obscurity as their parents. Therefore, they do need help from the community. It is
the best if we can both provide them with good facilities, “source of information or
telecommunication” and organize many real activities for them.

b. Your inspiration:

In 2011, our club was officially founded with the name “Community English Club”, and
CEC is used to stands for “Community English Club”. It is an official organization of
university students having the same interests and desire. The club is directly operated
under the permission of Faculty of Foreign Language-TN University. “Community” and
“English” are two main areas that we yearn for. All members of the club are trained
with not only all the best English skills but also other important skills like IT,
communicative, and soft skills. Flexibly, we always apply all those skills in many social
programs like voluntary activities in order to make a better community. And all is
shown clearly in the slogan “Sharing knowledge, Connecting Community”.

One of the most memorable and meaningful programs our club did was our volunteer
activity in last summer holiday. Particurlarly, we organized a one-week voluntary
activity in Tan Long, which is a very poor area in Thai Nguyen province. Children there
were really disadvantaged and they always did need help from community. Although
we could help them for only one week, we love them very much. We cannot forget the
day when we said good bye to each other, all people burst into to tears. Their innocent
and emotional eyes are always in our mind and they really enable us to do more real
things to help them. The summer has just begun and we cannot wait any more. We
want to provide them with higher-quality in all aspects this summer. Moreover, we
want to help them maintain and build their nice dreams. With all love from the bottom
of our heart and the strong hope of bringing children there a better life and future, we
have been carefully building and developing our project to help them.

4. Preparation and planning:

a. Your goal:

As mentioned earlier, we aim at teaching English and organizing activities for children
in remote areas. We want to provide them with many extra English classes. And we
believe that they will be both familiar with English and able to use English fluently
because English is a globalized language. Furthermore, we want to bring good time
and experiences which they cannot have with their disadvantaged condition. We want
to see their smile and optimistic spirit, which can help them get over their difficulties
and live with beautiful purposes.

Impact: How will you measure the change or improvement that your project makes?

b. We can use tests to measure their improvement in learning English as well as

questionnaires to get their own ideas and feelings. We will make a test every week
 to check the ability of them in learning English and using good skills we teach them
through real activities. In the end, we will make a survey to check their interest in
English and their reaction with our volunteer work. It means we want to know if
they enjoy our volunteer work.
c. Recruitment for volunteer students:
There are 2 rounds to recruit volunteers in total. In the first round, volunteers have
to fill in the online application form with their personal details as well as
summarize their purpose and motivation when taking part in this program. And the
volunteers having good applications will be selected to take part in an interview for
the second round. All worthy candidates will be selected from the interview to be
official volunteers for our project.
d. Total of volunteers:
There will be 50 volunteers involved in this program.
e. Get word out:
Our club has multi channels belonging to our ownership to convey information. We
will use website (cectn.net), you tube, slides share, flick, and facebook to inform
everything we are doing to people.
f. Public officials:
We could invite the Dean of our Faculty, the officials of the districts or communes
where we go and some organizations who care about the community into our
project. Besides, we will invite some local newspapers to write articles about our
project. As a result, more people know our project and more poor children will be
helped by community.
g. Action:
The project will be officially implemented on June 20, 2012. It will take for more Commented [A1]: change

than 2 months. During that time, our team will live in the same conditions with
children there. And every week, we will teach English and organize activities for
them to take part in. Besides, we can help children and their families do some
farming work.

5. Reflection: How do you think that YOU will change because of your project, and
how do you think that YOUR COMMUNITY will be different because of what you
and your friends did?
We believe that after this project, we can understand more about children life in
disadvantaged areas. And we will learn to see the world in a more positive view.
For the children there, we strongly expect that they will have optimistic eyes to see
their life. They will be able strong and positive enough to get over their difficulties.
Moreover, the project will arouse big desire to them. And for the community, we
hope that they can have a better understanding about disadvantaged children’s life,
and land a hand in helping them. One person has small thing, but with 2 other
people, they can make a big one. Time to time, people will get closer and love each
other more and more. The happiness and peace will always exists in our life.
6. DEMONSTRATION/CELEBRATION - When you have finished your project, how
will your volunteers and friends share with others what they have learned and
done, to have even more impact?
Firstly, we will make a report to inform the progress and result of the project to the
public officials and organizations involved in the project. Then, as mentioned earlier,
we will inform all people through multi-channels of our club in terms of website, slide
share, flick, face book and you tube. Moreover, after finishing the project, we will
organize a meeting in which we summary all weak points and strong points in
implementing it. We will share experiences to other people and we will inspire them to
take part in our next bigger project.

7. Continuing your project:

After 2 months implemented in this summer, the project will be developed more
strongly and continued implementing during the school year. We will select more
volunteers, more people to take part in. The program will be also built better and more
specific. Step by step, we will make our project perfect. There will be more people
knowing about, more people taking part in, and more people supporting for it.
We believe our project will get successful results.