The community of Tong Bat (Ba Vi District) has recently received substantial government support from the city of Hanoi to rebuild schools. However, local leaders understand that new equipment and modern facilities alone are not enough to bring changes to the children’s lives.
Our Early Childhood Development (ECD) work started in this community in 2008, and has involved improving preschool conditions as well as addressing total quality of care for children under 6 years old both in the school and in the family.
Now, more than 60% of the preschool teachers trained over the years by YWAM Mercy have retired. Many new teachers have never received training from our qualified education consultants. For this reason community leaders have asked us to continue supporting their teacher training and awareness-raising efforts.
This year, training on nine different topics will be provided over 18 days for 49 teachers and 21 staff at the preschool.
We arranged an exposure trip to another YWAM Mercy ECD project in Bac Giang Province for four members of the project’s local Board of Management, 60 preschool teachers and staff, and 15 local trainers (who visit and train in ECD for parents at home.)
I could see a lot of changes and improvements at the preschool when I came to visit them last week. I learnt that at least four other preschools in the district have visited Tong Bat preschool to learn from its model. We were also surprised as we see that the teachers here are now much more confident and have better skills than before.
