Incredible volunteering experience

I have just spent six weeks volunteering with GVI in Luang Prabang on the Women’s Empowerment Program. This was my first time volunteering and spending six weeks in one place, and it was an amazing experience. When I arrived I was nervous about my ability to lead a classroom and provide lessons which had an impact on the children’s English.
In my first week I was provided with training and given a mentor for each of my classes. This meant that I soon became confident enough to start planning and teaching by myself. After two weeks I felt very excited to make resources and tailor the classroom to the students I enjoyed teaching and getting to know.
The beauty of the GVI program is the diversity of the partners in Laos – I taught at a temple in the morning with novice monks, then at a buffalo farm with local village children 40 minutes away from Luang Prabang town. In the afternoons, I had my women’s empowerment class, which was primarily teaching English to a class of 10 hardworking girls. For me, this meant that each class was very different and I was able to have variety in my teaching because of the range of classes you teach.
The volunteers all live together in one guest house, which means you quickly become close to the whole group. I came in an intake of lovely volunteers who all were keen to start making an impact in Laos, we were of all different ages which meant we had different strengths and different stories to tell. We had weekends off which allowed us to explore Luang Prabang as a group. We went to the waterfalls, jewelry class making and learnt how farmers make rice at Seven Brothers Farm.
I cannot recommend volunteering enough and Luang Prabang is the perfect calm town to spend months getting to know and live in.