We are Melissa Oliveira and Sabine van Zanten and we are English teachers at an international school in Oegstgeest. We are going to conduct teacher training in Nepal in August through NELTA (the Nepal English language teachers' association).

We are so excited to be able to teach a full week of training where we develop all the sessions and materials for teachers as well as observe their lessons with their students. We will be working with a group of 30 teachers chosen by NELTA who will then cascade our training programme amongst other teachers from other schools during the year.

The objective is to grow this programme and take more teachers next year and continue to pass on the programme and hopefully even spread out to other subjects (as Nepal is trying to implement English as a medium of instruction). 

As international English teachers we want to 'walk the walk' and give back to the community by sharing our knowledge and experience with Nepali teachers.

How did it all start?

Melissa visited Nepal last year and taught a group of 7th graders at the Shree Yuwa Pratibha Vidya Mandir school in Kathmandu. Later on, she developed a penpal exchange project between these 7th graders and her own students in the Netherlands and visited Nepal again in February to hand out shoeboxes with special gifts for the Nepali penpals. She wanted to contribute in some way helping train English teachers and through NELTA has set up this first teacher training project and Sabine eagerly got on board. 

What is the money for?

We are taking on this adventure in our school holiday but we would like to ask for donations to cover some of our travel costs. We really appreciate your help! All money donated after we hit our goal will be donated to NELTA.