Muang Nga Primary School
The Muang Nga Primary school provides elementary education (K-5th) to over 500 families from surrounding villages. The school has a total of 11 classrooms with an average of 300 students annually. With the volume of children from neighboring villages, two classrooms must be used for each level. Students attend classes from August until May for six hours a day, five days a week. This constant influx of students and years of use has affected the classrooms themselves; leaving crumbling walls and splintered wooden desks for the learning environment.
Improving education and making it more accessible to Lao throughout the country has become one of the governments’ top priorities. Even though education has been recognized as crucial to the development of the country, it is one that cannot find success without the assistance from the outside. The government can only focus its efforts in spending funds on building much needed schools throughout the countryside and not with assisting the established ones with repairs and improvements.
JWOC has been able to assist Muang Nga Primary School with some of these needs and we hope to do more in the future. Through our Sponsor a Classroom programme, we are able to make necessary repairs to the classrooms used by both the Primary and JWOC students. Two classes of the five rooms in the JWOC classroom building have now been equipped with new desks and benches. The previous ones were inadequate for the ages of the children, forcing most to stand while writing in class and littered with gaping holes, exposed nails and splintering jagged edges.
Along with the desks JWOC was able to install electricity and ceiling fans in the classrooms. This allows the students a little more comfort in the warm months and visibility in the class during the dark and rainy ones. JWOC pays for 100% of the monthly electrical costs as well as assisting with the water bill for the school.
The Director of Muang Nga Primary School has worked in the school system as a teacher and Director for the last 25 years, so he knows firsthand how these small repairs and improvements have impacted his teachers, students and the community. Below is an excerpt from a message he wanted to give JWOC and classroom sponsors, Mary and Jim Brown, expressing his gratitude for the recent improvements to his school:
Families are unable to pay beyond the initial school fees so we have not been able to make the improvements. JWOC is the first to assist a school I have been working at in all the years I have worked in education. Without your help we could never improve our situation. I hope that JWOC will continue to find people like you to help the school change things for the better.
The electricity, fans and desks help to make our classes easier for the students. The desks are now the right size for the students and they are able to be cooler when it’s hot and see when it is dark. We are now able to reduce the amount of money we ask from the community for the school budget because you pay for the electrical costs and construction of new and safe desks. The students and teachers are very happy to have desks that don’t hurt them back!
I can say on behalf of the teachers, students, Muang Nga village chief and the families of the community, Khawp Jaii Laai Laai Duher (thank you very very much)!
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