Nomad Water School

I (Guillaume) got pretty sick in Phnom Penh due to food poisoning, so we didn’t had much time to prepare the Nomad Water School there. When we met with the director of the school though, Mrs. Delpech, she was at once interested in this and called an early meeting with the teachers the day after.

One of them will take care of the Water Box, which fits the ecological work they are doing with the students. Like many schools we visited, environment issues are part of the curriculum for all the students. This definitely meets our way of thinking about this, which is that one of the best point to change minds is by educating the youngest to take care about the planet they’re living on.

As usual, we will have feedback about how the Water Box project works, and what the children think about it.

Sipping some home made mulberry wine sitting in the restaurant of Vangvieng Organic Farm, I listen to Mr. Thi, telling me the history of this place.

Everything begun in 1995, when Mr. Thi came back to his home town to make an old dream come true. After several years working in NGOs and governmental departments, all related to natural resources, he finally set up his own farm.

More than a farm, this place is a more a community.

It started with mulberry trees. The leaves were used to feed some silk worms, used to weave silk fabrics. It takes lot of time and work to get there, around 100 days. To be more cost efficient, Mr. Thi decided to make some tea with the mulberry leaves. This was the beginning of a long list of activities made in the farm by and for the community. Now, they grow organic vegetables and fruits, goats, pigs, and of course mulberry trees.

The main goal of all this is to help people in this area to get skills to earn a living. Also, it helps the kids to have a fair education. Most of them couldn’t go to school because it was too far from their home, and those who could go to school had just a it of rice for breakfast and shared a salad for 5 or 6 for lunch.

At first, some of the money made by the farm was used to buy those children bicycles so that they can go to school. But after few years, the bikes were damaged, and it was expensive to repair them. Enters AVAN (Asian Volunteer Action Network), from the Korean commission of UNESCO. They donated the farm a school bus. Thanks to this bus, 30 students could be brought to school every morning. They now have a second one, which allows 60 children to have access to education.

As for the nutrition part, the milk from the goats is a source of calcium and is a good complement to the rice for their breakfast. Also, the profit made by the farm is used to buy them some good meals, and also the school uniform.

The restaurant, the guest house, the “Mojito Bar”, the silk, the tea… all this is to help the children.

In addition, a Belgium youngster, Ward is creating a curriculum for private evening English classes, for free. To teach them, volunteers from the guesthouse can apply and give time to the local youth, which is very grateful and very demanding. In a village of 1,200 people, around 50 children attend those classes.

Lately, AVAN is also creating a library, a youth center, an environmental group…

So if you plan to travel in Laos and want to do something useful, take some time to help this community that needs volunteer. Working in the garden, teaching English, milk or feed the goats, there will always be something you can do.

For more information, visit the farm’s website

www.laofarm.org

or Stay Another Day

www.stayanotherday.org

Probably our best time with the Nomad Water School so far. Phoudindaeng is a small village next to Veng Viang, central Laos. There is an organic farm, created by Mr Thi, that commits itself to help financially disadvantaged children to have a fair education, with the project Equal Education for All.

For more information concerning this farm, see our article : http://nomadwaterschool.canalblog.com/archives/2008/09/24/11382946.html

(also published in the eRenlai magazine)

Equal Education for All is co-organized by a Korean NGO, AVAN (Asian Volunteer Action Network). With their support, we had a chance to present the Water Box to their Environment Workgroup. They really liked it, and they will use it as a support for the coming months.

Still, they wanted us to present this project to the children. So there we are, sitting on the floor, outside the mud house which is their office, surrounded by a stunning landscape, talking, discussing, experiencing and exchanging ideas about the preservation of water, a critical issue in Laos.

EPTS, the English Program for Talented Students. This is were we were sent by a friend, living in Bangkok.

This wasn’t the best time for us to knock at the door of this school: a midterm exam was scheduled 2 weeks later, and there was a coup d’état going on. Still, we were welcomed by Miss Rangsimongkol, the foreign teachers’ coordinator. When we told her why we were here, she introduced us to 2 students who were working on a very interesting project. They were competing in an international contest about the environment. They have to make a video presenting what is done and what can be done regarding ecology. With ne of them classmates recording the interview, they asked us many questions, like why we decided to commit ourselves in this project, or what kind of result we expect. This interview will be part of the video they will present in Seoul.

Then, Miss Rangsimongkol told us about another project going on in this school. Teachers were setting a work group to get the children interested in sciences, based on experiences, manipulation. “Science-is-fun” kind of project. And the Water Box is exactly what they needed, according to her. So, from now on, they will use it to get kids interested in this topic and sciences at the same time.

One of the teachers was ready to let us do a presentation with his class, but an announcement in the school changed this plan. Due to the political situation, the school would be closed for a few days. Too bad, but the Water Box will be used here, and hopefully will convince some children that they have to care about water.

A good friend of ours, Justine Estève, is the director of the French Culture and Language Center in Penang, northern Malaysia. Both her and her secretary helped us to setup a session in the Alliance.

Kids, parents, teachers and visitors attended this session, even though it was on a Saturday afternoon.

From the very first experience, the children left their chairs and got stuck around the table were we were. They asked loads of questions, wanted to take part in the experiences, commented what was happening and asked a lot of questions. They were so interested we felt bad to tell them it was all we got for this 2 hours presentation.

Before leaving, one of the youngest girls came to us, an embarrassed look on her face. “I wanted to give you a drawing before you leave, but I don’t have my crayons here”. How touching is that?

The day after that, we were invited to another school, West English Course. Ade Kres, one of the English teachers also works at the Tourism Information Center, where we met. He was very enthusiastic about the Nomad Water School and asked the director of his school if he can arrange a meeting with us and his class.

This time, when we arrived at the school, everything was ready for us: a laptop, a video projector, everything we need for the experiences and around 30 kids.

For Ade, this has a double interest. First of all, of course, it’s a good way for the youngster to learn about the environmental issue. Then, it’s also a good opportunity to practice their oral comprehension in English. He translated everything, encouraging the students to ask questions, participate to the experiences and even do them at home.

Time flew so fast we didn’t notice it was getting dark outside, and barely notice the power outage.

At the end of the presentation, we told him we hoped the time spent with his students will change the state of mind of at east one of them. “It did” he answered. “I will keep all this in mind, and tell them about it, often”.

Then the director came and thanked us for what we did, and greeted us by a very sincere and touching “God bless you”.

Here we are, the beginning of this long trip around Asia, with the Water Box in our backpacks. Thanks to a local guide, we were introduced to an English teacher in a school of Rantepao, Sulawesi, Indonesia, Marmten Paramban. Even though the students were supposed to be on summer vacation, some were still at school to prepare a last exam.
 

For our very first time presenting the Nomad Water School project in front of a classroom full of children, we were a bit tensed. Around 30 pairs of eyes were looking at us when we introduced ourselves, but after a few minutes, we got more confident.

As time went by though, most of the students went out to give phone calls, take a walk or just leave. At one moment, just 3 girls were in the classroom, visibly interested in the experiences. Their level of English was fair, but probably not enough to understand everything; too bad the teacher only translated half of what we said.

2 hours after we arrived in the school, we felt like what we tried to do was useless. The kids weren’t listening, and those who were didn’t understand our point. For them, we just came here to show them a few experiences, but the goal to aware them about the environmental dimension of our approach wasn’t reach at all.

Pretty disappointed by this failure, we decided we will do better next time.

The Water Box is specifically designed for primary classes of 8 to 12 year olds who study water as part of their curriculum.

Contents:

• 1 teacher’s handbook detailing a range of experiments and other classroom activities, complete with commentary and suggestions for  further learning. It also comes with worksheets that can be photocopied for the pupils, illustrating the different kinds of activity.


• 30 water booklets to lend to pupils for reading at home or in class. A series of questions and answers guide the children through the natural water cycle, from the production of drinking water and treatment of wastewater to the usage and distribution of water resources around the world.


• 3 posters
  • “The natural water cycle”
  • “The water treatment cycles”
  • “Freshwater availability per capita in the world”
• Equipment required for 15 experiments (like boxes with lids, pots, measuring cylinders, pipettes, rubber bands, PH strips…)

Water offers a good opportunity to review most environmental aspects, and is therefore ideal as a core theme of any environmental education policy.

In addition to fun experiments with water, the Water Box is a useful tool for studying a wide variety of subjects related in one way or another to water, such as science, technology, history, geography, language, craft and design. The hands-on approach is bound to capture the imagination and interest of the pupils.

The program revolves around the pupils’ active participation in the discovery of the basic principles of water, through experimentation as well as scientific research.

By learning that freshwater is not always available in the same quantities everywhere in the world, children become accustomed to the need for consideration for others. They also come to realize that water is rare, fragile and vital resource that we should save and share.

Today more than ever, caring for the environment is a major issue that concerns us all. Sustainable development has become a key component in most sectors of the economy. In view of the impact on the future of our planet, the need to raise the general level of environmental awareness starts at school.

In this process, water is a core issue for the future.

For almost ten years, Veolia Water has been playing a significant role in promoting respect for our water resources. This commitment extends to schools, with teaching aids designed to make children aware of the importance of water and the need for everyone to take action against pollution and waste.