Provide long term teaching assistance and learn Spanish in Nicaragua
Program Overview
As a volunteer on this project, you will live in Estelí, a rural province in northwestern Nicaragua surrounded by beautiful valleys and waterfalls. There you will teach both children and adults a range of subjects in Spanish, focusing on basic literacy and numeracy.
Our long-term teaching volunteers provide continuity to their pupils’ education and support their continued educational development. Your funding and long-term assistance on this project helps ensure that we can continue to provide these students with an education that would otherwise not be available to them.
Our in-country partners, Phoenix, have run community development programs throughout Latin America since 2003. They began projects in Nicaragua in 2009, and have achieved recognition from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education for their education programs.
Life on the Program
Our teaching projects are located in the communities of La Thompson and Chiriza. In these towns, you will spend Monday through Friday teaching a range of subjects to children during regularly scheduled classes and to adults in open enrollment literacy classes.
Witnessing the children’s development that results from your efforts as a long-term teaching volunteer is a hugely rewarding experience. In order to ensure these results, you will be expected to devote time and energy to the careful lesson planning necessary to lead and teach effective classes.
Your home base will be the town of Estelí, where you will live with a local host family in basic but comfortable accommodations. Your spare time in Estelí can be spent making local friends and getting to know your fellow GVI volunteers.
Program Details
The Phoenix program believes that standards of living can be improved through education. Thus the overarching goal of this project is to increase the number of children that attend school in the host communities.
In the communities that host our projects, scarce funding means that schools suffer from a lack of teachers and educational materials and persistently low literacy rates result. This project’s overall goal is to help alleviate these problems by creating educational opportunities that would be otherwise unavailable to the students through a 25 year plan which aims for the youngest child at any time to be able to afford education for their children through the better opportunities provided by Phoenix.
Volunteer Testimonials
I have returned from the project with a completely different outlook – in comparison to Esteli, or the whole of Nicaragua, London feels very cold and unwelcoming and every morning I wake up wishing I was back in Esteli! I gained skills in lesson planning and teaching that, with no prior experience, I would never have imagined I could pick up so quickly and the love and gratitude of the community towards us, as well as the bonds I made with my students are sentiments that will stay with me forever.
Living and working in a different culture taught me a lot. The fact that my family involved me in activities that I would never have been able to do as a tourist gave me an amazing insight into Nicaraguan culture. It taught me to value what I have in my life in the UK, - friends, families, commodities and facilities available to me. The children I was teaching had hardly anything, but were so happy and full of life and ambition and worked so hard to help support their families and communities when they weren’t in school. I also learnt to be more laid back in my attitude to life in general! I think also it made me realise how much I love teaching and working with children and that I have a natural skill in that area and so I am looking into options of changing my career in the UK.
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Program Details
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What's Included
- Pre-departure support and discounted services
- 24-hour emergency phone
- Airport pick-up (unless otherwise stated)
- Arrival orientation
- Long term experienced staff
- Safe and basic accommodations (usually shared)
- All meals (unless otherwise stated in field manuals)
- Welcome meeting
- Location orientation
- All necessary project training by experienced staff
- All necessary project equipment and materials
- 24-hour in-country support
- Work outside of the tourist trail and in the heart of a rural Nicaraguan community
- 2 weeks off every 3 months to enjoy the rest of what Nicaragua has to offer. You will need to liaise with the project manager to organize time off
What's Not Included
- Flights
- Medical and travel insurance
- Visa costs
- Personal kit
- Additional drinks and gratuities
- Extra local excursions
- International and domestic airport taxes
