ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER INDIGO THREADS SCHOOL SUPPLY DONATION BUT DIFFERENT, NOT SAME-SAME
February 6, 2013
Packing the rented flat-bed Hyundai truck with cases of Lao style notebooks, thousands of pencils and pens and Lux bar soap cases, we headed to outback remote rural schools. Lux soap, you ask? Soap is a luxury item most poor villagers do without but a simple means to help prevent students’ illnesses. Indigo Threads often includes soap as part of any donation. Students in these regions rarely receive essential donations of any kind due to their inaccessible rugged locations.
Ecstatically pulling it all together with a mid-morning Monday start, we anticipated a 5-day field trip with overnight stays at rural villages. The best organized Lao plans require 1. . . 2 . . . maybe 3 alternatives. Fifteen kilometer outside of Pakse, the truck broke down never to start again. Day 1 was lost scrambling to locate a new truck and transferring our precious cargo. We arrived at Houy Houen village Home Stay at 9:00 pm; my day spent sitting on the hot roadside with a disabled truck, securing our donations.
Fed, bathed and rested, days 2-5 were filled with 100’s of welcoming young bright students and teachers sabaidees with their grateful thank you at 16 remote rural schools. Many students had never interacted with a foreigner while others had never seen a foreigner. Curious students with little apprehension, Indigo Threads I CARE/WE CARE goodwill personal interchanges were more important than our donations, from my point of view. Day 1's disruption was a vague memory after many rewarding days with engaging students at their schools. Indigo Threads 5-day school supply donation remote field trip was one of those Lao land experiences that makes my heart sing.
Same, same but different, Indigo Threads School Supply donation distribution was altered this year to assist more remote poor schools in other Districts. Repeatedly assisting the same students/schools for 7-years, noticeably the region has improved significantly within the past couple of years. When does a helping hand become an hand out? We will continue to assist our ‘home’ progressing area students/schools with select Education Programs ie Indigo Threads nutritious School Lunch Program when funded and reinstated while extending our outreach to less assisted regions.
Insight: More than ever, the lack of teachers in these remote schools is beyond critical. Young developing minds are attending school with so few teachers to educate them. Indigo Threads again has ‘stepped up to the plate’ and will offer 5-7 teacher training 2013 scholarships. Be a part of the solution with a 2 or 3-year commitment to support a $550. per year teacher training scholarship student.
While Lao rural life is improving in some rural Southern Lao Districts, there are numerous critical poverty reduction issues to address in others. Help us make the difference by educating Laos’ next generation. We visited 16 rural schools, 1,300 students and 37 teachers.
You can imagine the difficulty in choosing just a few photos to reflect our welcome while meeting the students at their schools. Expect to see a 2nd page to this same blog.
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