Being Neighbourly

To ensure our neighbours are aware that we are qualified English teachers, have been to Cambodia many times, and are now here to stay; we created an extra flyer, translated into 'Khmer', advertising free English lessons for this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We walked our street last night; great interest was given and the flyers were read carefully. Faces lit up at the sight of 'free lesson'.

We are finding that the Cambodian Information network operates a lot by word-of-month. Someone always has a friend, who has a cousin, who lives next-door to someone who wants to learn English. Therefore, free lessons means the word spreads about our teaching.

Our teaching methods are interactive, creative and fun and far different from how Thai and Cambodian teachers teach. Once someone has a lesson with us, they enjoy it and want to do more. But the difficulty is finding the initial few students to get things started.

The children across the road, who I began teaching just a few days ago, now want to learn everyday: word-of-mouth works.