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.