CLARE CARES

News from Australia

Clare & Jeannette

One of the first jobs of the day is to start my computer to catch-up with overnight news from Laos and our worldwide team of volunteers and supporters. This morning I had received a dozen emails. I scanned them and decided to read Claire's first. She told me the wonderful news of her fund raising dinner. A packed restaurant had enjoyed a Lao/Thai dinner washed down with genuine Beer Lao.  Claire told her guests about the work of LEOT and raised a fantastic AUD $1120  to help the students in our school in Luang Prabang. 

A student riding a donated bike

School Director Jeannette always has a very long wish list including bikes for students from the villages that have no transport and books for our library.

Spaces for more books

Clare's fund raising dinner in Canberra

We are very lucky to have a number of volunteers like Clare that give their time and skills to help the many poor students that are determined to improve their lives through education. They come with many different skills ranging from teachers to IT experts and carpenters.

Clare has helped us greatly working with School Director Jeannette to develop the schools curriculum, carrying out teachers training, writing new tests and examinations and interviewing new students for places at school 

Being a volunteer at LEOT can also be  an adventure when just getting to work involves a boat trip across the Nam Khan river and then wading  ashore or taking aid to a rural village.

Clare helps distribute jumpers in a rural village

The LEOT School Luang Prabang

Today thanks to volunteers like Clare and the generosity of our supporters LEOT is growing and helping the wider community.

We have over 200 students attending  free lessons at our school.
We are providing educational scholarships for students to attend University.
We are teaching computer studies as part of our course.
 We are active in our community providing support to rural villages in times of need

With your help we can do much more

www.leot.org.uk

A DREAM BECOMES REALITY

THE BIRTH OF OUR COMPUTER CENTRE

The First Students

The LEOT Centre is a story of remarkable endeavour by a small British Charity and its Worldwide Volunteers and supporters.

The Charity was formed due to the vision of founders Alan & Chris to provide scholarships for disadvantaged kids in Laos.

A vision to build a school was born in 2010 and became a reality in September 2012 with the admission of our schools first students.

The School has just entered its fourth year of teaching with a record 200 pupils learning English in 11 classes. Its teaching staff is made up of a very keen group of young Lao teachers supported by visiting foreign volunteers. 

The project is lead by Jeannette a remarkable retired teacher from Australia. She made the mistake 2 years ago of dropping by to volunteer. She now lives in Luang Prabang for most of the year and is our dedicated School Director.

LEOT is also remarkably lucky to have the support of Teng our Homeland Director. Born in Luang Prabang he now lives in Vientiane with his wife and 2 young children. Teng was our very first volunteer and has been a dedicated member of our management team since LEOT was formed. His knowledge and help has been fundamental to the success of LEOT. It was in the Summer of 2015 he was successful in organising the gift of computers from The World Bank in Vientiane. This marked the birth of our project to undertake the development of a purpose build computer network to teach computer studies

Students using some of the 20 computers in the network

The clock was now running and we needed to find money and support to make the project a reality. 

Thanks to the help of LEOT donors and the remarkable help of the Rotary Club of Leighton Linslade and Rotary District 1260 the project had the funds to proceed.

We still had to find the specialist knowledge to plan and build the network and develop the teaching resource.

 Luck was on our side thanks to the help of Trustee Nick and second time volunteer David from New Zealand when both came to our aid. We also made contact with friends GoPhil foundation in America and asked did they know of a volunteer that would help us develop a teaching resource. With their help we spoke with Angus from Scotland. He was soon recruited and found his way to Laos to partner David developing our teaching programme.

Its now mid October a miracle has happened the computer network is complete, the teaching plan is written and our teachers trained .

The 20th October was a remarkable day when we held our first lessons.

A project is made of many parts 

We send our thanks to the many people that have made it possible.

We would like to record our very special thanks to David Allen for his endless work and spirit in giving the project life.

FLASH FLOOD DISASTER NEAR LUANG PRABANG

FOUR KILLED

OTHERS INJURED

MANY HOMELESS

Teachers and volunteers from the LEOT School in Luang Prabang joined friends from a Laos organisation Education and Sharing to deliver aid to three villages decimated by flash flooding at the end of the monsoon season.

The villagers had no warning of the impending disaster as it had not rained for many days. Four people were killed when water surged down their normally quiet river. It came very suddenly and contained large quantities of mud, trees and boulders from nearby mountains.

All the villagers are poor. Besides the dead others are injured and over thirty five riverside homes have been destroyed or severely damaged. Villagers are worried that they may have to move to new locations because of the risk of future floods. They told us they were very lucky that the disaster did not kill more people.

LEOT is collecting emergency funds to give immediate assistance to the villages.

Please Help us

Donations can be made at our school in Luang Prabang or at our web site

www.leot.org.uk

Please mark your donation DISASTER RELIEF

GRADUATION DAY

FOUR LEOT STUDENTS

QUALIFY AS TEACHERS

It's a long journey for a Lao student to graduate.

This week has been fantastic as four LEOT scholarship 

students have completed their studies to qualify as teachers.

We send our congratulations to

Miss Lee Her

Miss Bounya Her

Peth

Bounma

We are very proud that Peth and Miss Lee Her 

are joining LEOT as teachers in September.

NEWS FROM MAI

Travels to the USA on a YSEALI Scholarship

Dear everyone, 

This is my blog.

Culture and History, 

Native games and National Bison Range

“Time and tide can wait for no man”

​

“Amazing University in the bight morning”

Hello everybody, I’m Mai Chansamai RATTANASUVANNAPHON, from Luangprabang, Laos PDR.  

“Time and tide can’t wait for no man” Oh no! Unbelievable this is the last week for us to be in Missoula, Montana I gonna leave a charming, beautiful, peaceful, and friendly place. I wanna stop because I’m going to miss you so much. Especially, my friends and all gorgeous mentor.  

Today is one more day that I’m very happy and enjoy the scheduled activities.

First activity for today is to visit Culture and History of the confederated Indian Reservation Salish and Kootenai Tribes (People’s Center Museum). Since I was a child, I  have seen the movies about the people like Native Indian American. I didn’t even know who they were and where do they lived. But today I learn about their life and their culture. I was really surprised to see they collect all of the ancient material, traditional clothes and how they hunt animal as their food. The main language of Native American Indian is Salish. For Kootenai there are just a very few of people speak the language

  

“The Grizzly Bear catching the fish 

I'm scared !

 We move to Salish and Kootenai College Health Department for the Native Games and cultural Preservation. Professor Paul Philips lead us to play games. There are three game  stickball, double ball and running scream. We are separated in to two teams, women and men for the first game were chasing small ball and then shoot to the goal. “While we were playing the game, I chased the ball and everyone tried to chase the ball from me, but I gave it to Hyuen no one knew so they still ran after me” 5555 I tricked them, they all said I’m a dangerous girl. This game the men won. The second game was double ball. This game has two teams and the men and women are mixed. At the end of the game, I did it , I shot the double ball in to the goal….”Yeyyey! I can do it” and last game before lunch was running scream. 

All the games we did are part of their culture.

“Playing the stickball and double ball my team was the winner”

For our lunch today was rice soup with carrot, potato, and bison meat. In Laos, I ate buffalo meat quite hard, but bison meat is really soft and nice. In front of the college there is an eagle statute made by old cars. The people  believe that the spirit has been living in the statute so everyone must respect The people in the college all welcome YSEALI group. Teachers and students are really friendly they and serve us tasty ice cream.

Last activity for today, we continued to the National Bison Range. Bison Range is one of oldest wildlife refuges in the nation and it also an example of attempts a build a federal partnership under the  1994 tribal self- Governance.

 

“The real Bison”

It was impressive , when I saw the horn of the elk. It has a lots, in other countries, it may be  traded for sale, but here they collect everything. Bison and buffalo in my country are really different. It’s the first time of life to see  real bison. It was really wonderful day. While we were driving back to Missoula, I could never forget how beautiful the mountain was.

I’m falling in love Missoula, it is my second home. I want to stop the time! Feels like going to miss somethings in life.

​

 "The mission mountain.....I love the nature"

.

World Bank Computer Gift Changes IT teaching

A Bright IT Future For Students

 

LEOT Trustee Peter this week visited the World Bank in Vientiane to receive a gift of over fifty second user computers to be used in schools in the Luang Prabang area.

LEOT will complete its third year of teaching English at its school in Luang Prabang this month and is busy planning for its new courses which will commence in early September.

LEOT has been developing its library to allow IT training and has always found it difficult due to a lack of computers.

Thanks to this fantastic gift the school will spend the summer months developing a network that will allow every student to have a machine when the new course starts in the autumn. Every class will now have one lesson a week learning how a computer works and developing their skills using an interactive course from Cambridge University.

As part of the project LEOT will purchase monitors, keyboards and mice for all the desktop computers and will then distribute the machines to state schools in the district.

LEOT is a UK registered charity and is funded by donations and gift aid from the UK Government

To complete the project LEOT is raising nearly $4000 to purchase the additional equipment required

Can you help?

www.leot.org.uk

We Love Luang Prabang

LEOT LOVES OUR TOWN

LEOT teacher Mai is leading a campaign to encourage everyone to love Luang Prabang and improve the environment of World Heritage Town of Luang Prabang

Rubbish on the Khan River Bank

Mai is a graduate in Environmental Management and studied as a LEOT scholarship student at the National University. Today she works in the Luang Prabang refuse department and is also a part time teacher at the LEOT English School.

 MAI and LEOT are working together to encourage members of our community to love the town and clean up the dirty areas. 

Over the last few weeks teams of students have scoured the town every weekend to pick up the litter and clear the river banks.

Sadly we are not solving the problem as most rubbish is thrown on the ground as we do not have enough bins in the town.

Education is also a problem and few people see it as a problem and are not prepared to take their rubbish home for disposal.

We don't plan to stop the collections. 

We are being joined by other groups at the end of the month to help us clear more rubbish and make the towns rivers and streets as beautiful as the fine temples.

The Message of We Love Luang Prabang is being developed with new ideas.

We have started a We Love Luang Prabang Facebook page and have reached over 20,000 people this week

Mai has made a broadcast on Radio Luang Prabang to spread the word and encourage others to join  the project

LEOT has purchased four new bins for our village of Ban Panluang

Please  help us and 
Love Luang Prabang

Are you a business? 
Why not join us and sponsor a bin

If you are a visitor or a resident
Please bin your rubbish or take it home

LEOT

                                  Loves

                                  the

                                  Environment

                                  and 

                                  Our

                                  Town