About the school and the kids

Even though the village of Program in the Valley has a magical charm that is unique in its kind, it is located in the poverty stricken part of Bali, the East. That is one of the main reasons we have chosen this village to spread our knowledge and inspiration.

And we haven chosen rightly…Since the start of this program (May 2015) the number of children wanting to attend our program has been over the roof. In our first week 200 children applied to join our classes, and many more since!

That is why we are especially in this program always looking for volunteers to help support our team.

Because of the secluded nature of the location we do recommend an initial maximum stay of 6 weeks here (that could be extended once you are here).

In every school we are using the ESL curriculum which gives a structure that allows for consistency and routine.

Most children are in the basic level, followed by the intermediate level and we have small classes of advanced level. So mostly volunteers will be teaching very basic English (think: words, time, places, names, family etc) and we do this in a creative and FUN way. To keep the classes interesting and fun we ask volunteers to bring in their own skills and talents into the classroom (think: yoga, music, dance, sports, arts and crafts).

The children are working through a program with changing topics and depending on their level of English, specific worksheets and lesson plans of the curriculum are used.

Each class is provided with a folder about the class which includes lesson plans, worksheets and volunteer diaries. Volunteers are always teaching with an another volunteer. This co-teaching is very important and volunteers are expected to work as a team in their class. Besides the curriculum, volunteers are free and also excepted to use their own creativity to organize activities such as games, songs and other creative learning, related to the subject of the curriculum.

This is no boring ‘job’, it’s meant to be easy going, creative and light! We like to play educational games, and do small competitions. The concept is that children learn best through play. It may seem ‘slow’ learning, but it will stay with them beyond those hours in school.

The longer they join our classes, the more they learn, the better their chances to succeed in life, continue to grow, get good opportunities in life and they may even join our (paid) internship program within VP Bali.

The classes change from time to time (depending on school holidays, ceremonies and the like) so it is important for volunteers to be flexible, patient and “in the moment” within these changes. Repetition is very important to help the children learn, but because it is an extra class which they join because they want to, it needs to stay fun. All children that come are eager to learn, and we keep things interesting by doing regular activities like; monthly recycle events, student of the Month awards, and workshops by professionals (volunteers and local professionals) so it’s not too difficult to keep everyone’s attention.