Starting in Vietnam

Travel to Teach will start program in Nha Trang in Vietnam. We will work with Crazy Kim, teaching street kids that sleeps on the beach.

Crazy Kim, a Canadian/Vietnamese systems engineer, came back to Nha Trang to teach at the university. She reacted on the situations of the children that sleep on the beach started a campain on their behalf and now has a bar to support her work protecting these kids from abuse and sexual exploitation. She now "hijacks" backpackers to help teaching the children in the mornings.

We will help by providing volunteers to make the teaching more coherent and relevant and we will also help out financially with feeding and clothing the children. This is a pilot project and we will start a s soon as we get some volunteers to send. We are also talking to authorities in the schools in Nha Trang to try to get accreditation for our volunteers to teach in normal schools. Our feeling, generally, was that there is an enormous interest from Vietnamese people to get volunteers teaching English and other subjects.

The town has a wonderful long beach, first class diving possibilities and any other sea side facility that one may want. We have started this Nha Trang is a seaside resort 150 km north of Ho Chi Minh City, as an effort to make "volunteering round trips of South East Asia" a possibility. We have a similar contact in Laos and may soon open there as well. And then a project in Cambodia would make this dream come true.

Tijuana in Mexico !

Adriana has worked part time for several months to put together the Travel to Teach Mexico program.

The needs are enormous. Tijuana is a border town to USA and many Mexican and other Latin American people come to get a chance to get over to the US. They often get stuck in TJ and lots of social misery comes out of that situation. T2T will work with abused women, street children and in other institutions. To get more information on the Mexican alternative please mail Adriana.

Kelly's volunteer story

Kelly Hancok, 25, from Sacramento, USA went back to the Tijuana she knew from early years...

NEVER AGAIN
When I was twelve years old, my mother took me to TJ for the first time. Her and I browsed a touristy artisan market, where shopkeepers heckled us in "Spanglish", accusing us of being "cheapskates" when my mother embarrassingly haggled for lower prices. She likes to remind me about my reaction to that experience: "I HATE it here! Mom, let's leave. PLEASE! I'm NEVER coming back here!"

When I was 19 years old, I went to TJ for the second time. This time, I went for the purpose of partying with a group of girlfriends. We dolled ourselves up and went on a search for the exciting nightlife that a lower drinking age in Mexico could provide us. After indulging in cheap drinks and dancing and practicing saying "I'm an American citizen" so we could cross back over the border, we missed our 2am bus, and huddled together for warmth until the 4am bus came to pick us up and take us back to San Diego. I woke up with a headache, and found myself in the doctor's office 2 days later with pneumonia and bronchitis... Read Kelly's story

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