Catherine, United States

Good afternoon everyone.

Today’s volunteerpost is about Catherine. She volunteered for two weeks in December, one week at SCAO1 and one at SCAO2 to open up a partnership between SCAO and another organization that will probably send more longterm volunteers to us in the future.
Her full name is Catherine Gresham, she is 27 and from the United States. In the past she worked with a lot of different NGOs that involved a range of activities from environmental, structural and cultural development. She also tends bar. At the moment she teaches English and travels around the world.
After being in one place for a couple of years, she felt her life was becoming too self-serving and she needed to get back into the community, so she decided to volunteer. She chose Cambodia, because it is not as developed as its surrounding neighbors and she thought it would be a more interesting experience. She definitely does not regret her choice: “I HEART CAMBODIA!! It is such a beautiful country and the people are so benevolent! People: AMAZING, Weather: HOT Food: AWESOME”
Although she only stayed for a short time, she was able to observe all classes and substitute teach some upper level classes. She was glad to help out with the upper levels but her heart lies with the younger students. Since a few weeks, SCAO started to work with new books, and Catherine says that this new curriculum makes it very easy to pick up and teach any class. What did the children teach her? “HOW TO LOVE JUSTIN BIEBER!!!” And for her future SCAO taught her, that she wants to pursue teaching English as another language. During her stay she lived in the volunteerhouses of both schools, and she liked it a lot, because it gave her the opportunity to get to know the other volunteers better.
“I absolutely love SCAO as an organization. I love that you can see the connection between their mission and everyone who is a part of the program/community. SCAO is in true partnership with the community and you can see the devotion each member has from volunteer coordinators, to executives of the organization, to students at the school, everyone works together. I loved my time at SCAO. Like I said, there is true heart in SCAO and it is obvious at every level. I was so glad to be a part of it for a short time!”