Shanna Kelly from Canada shares about her third week as a short term volunteer with Partners Relief & Development in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand:

Life in the office continues as usual. I continue to work on lesson plans, making sure I have an idea of the direction the lessons will take as the student’s progress. At the same time, I strive to incorporate useful material that students will be able to learn and use in their everyday situations. For example, two students are employed as fruit sellers – so I taught a lesson on fruits and their English names, and interactions between the seller and customer. It is encouraging to see the students making progress, even just remembering material from the previous lesson. I also try to make things fun, adding games like “memory” to review new vocabulary words.

This past Wednesday I was really encouraged to have 7 students attend, which is more than usual. It was really a lot of fun to help them learn and to get to know them a little bit more.

In addition to teaching English, this week I also helped Doug  Gibbons by writing a scenario using complied material taken from field notes and a project proposal. This scenario will be used in an upcoming Community Social Worker Training project in Burma, provided the needed funds are secured.

I also spent a few hours sorting and labelling pictures that will be posted on Partners’ Facebook page sometime in the near future. These pictures were the ones I had the privilege of taking when I accompanied Sarah Lapa to two children’s homes last week. I really believe that pictures are integral to the work that Partners does. From our own living situations, sometimes it is difficult to imagine what it might be like “over there.” Pictures help to bridge the gap between written articles and real experience.

On that note though, having given money to Partners before, I have now had the privilege of seeing with my own eyes where the money is going, not that I ever had any doubts. I can assure you though, it is doing a lot of very good things – I have seen a small part of this – and it is good, very good.