On February 8th we visited the offices of the Room to Read in Laos and the Napheui Primary School (90 minutes by car from Vientianne) which we supported to build with some help from our friends in Switzerland. Walking up towards the school building and hearing the children either reading out loud, responding to questions posed by the teachers, or just simply giggling made us smile. By the way, the school building has 6 rooms – 5 classrooms and a library. In Laos, primary school takes 5 years.
Even though we knew that Room to Read works effectively together with the community and the local government, actually seeing how the stakeholders collaborate was a great experience. We were received like “dignitaries” by students, local government officials and senior representatives of the village.
Some statistics that we got from the village chief’s presentation: The population of the village is 891, there are 140 families, 104 children attend “our” primary school. Officially, 57 girls, the rest boys. (p.s. it felt like there were quite a few more girls than boys at least on the day we visited) We are extremely happy that we could be part of such a wonderful project. See more pictures of the visit.