The Language Teacher
02 - 2001
Teaching for Charity
John Small
GILE Global Issues in Language Education: Global issues refer to world problems such as war, hunger, poverty, oppression,racism, sexism, environmental destruction, and to concepts such as peace, justice, human rights, world development, social responsibility and international understanding. The Global Issues in Language Education (GILE) Special Interest Group (SIG) aims to: (a) promote integration of global issues, global awareness and social responsibility into language teaching, (b) promote networking and mutual support among language educators dealing with global issues, (c) promote awareness among language teachers of important developments in global education and the fields of environmental education, human rights education, peace education and development education. GILE publishes a quarterly newsletter towards these aims. For more information contact: Kip Cates, Tottori University; Koyama; Tottori City; Japan 680-8551; email: kcates@fed.tottori-u.ac.jp; phone/fax: (0857) 31-5650. Homepages: http://www.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~gile/ and http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/nsig/globalissues/gi.html On-line back issues of the newsletter: http://jalt.org/global/
At JALT 2000 in Shizuoka, a group of teachers met to discuss ideas related to charity language teaching. Many other teachers I spoke with were also keen to learn more and get involved with charity teaching on some level. The original idea behind charity classes is for a teacher to organize a class for the purpose of donating all class fees to charity. It's based on the Kansai-based Save the Children program that invites teachers to volunteer teach one class a month with student fees being donated to needy children. While starting your own charity class can involve more time and energy, the possibilities and rewards are greater. The group that met at JALT also discussed forming a Charity Teaching group for the purposes of sharing information, ideas, and materials for teaching charity classes.
My American friend's Japanese wife likes to remind us about how good English-speaking foreigners have it in Japan. She's right. We may have some challenges, but in some ways we are quite lucky, especially financially. We can make money relatively easily teaching. Charity language teaching allows us to put that money making potential to a purpose beyond our personal finances. We can do something concrete to address some of the social problems we teach about in our language classes.
Charities
It's exciting to consider the sort of positive effects the proceeds of a typical class can have. My charity classes typically meet for ten 60-minute classes and have collected from 60,000 yen to 120,000 yen per term. Should several teachers independently teach classes for a particular charity, the combined donation could be very impressive.
I have taught classes for several organizations including PTEF (The Patchaporn Thai Education Fund), the YMCA (for earthquake relief in Taiwan and Turkey), Sri Ram Orphanage in India, One Cambodia Village, and a project to build a hospital in rural Guatemala. I have enjoyed seeking out new, worthwhile causes.
At the first class, I give everyone the chance to suggest a charity, but thus far we have ultimately gone with my choices, the first of which was the Patcharaporn Thai Education Fund (PTEF). A British man living in Thailand started this organization to help poor Thai girls -- who often end up in Bangkok as prostitutes -- gain an education and a better life. PTEF has built a dorm, paid for books for students, and taken care of the basic needs of the over thirty female students for several years now. PTEF also helps finance a hill tribe village school, providing learning materials and a small teacher's salary. A month after finishing teaching my charity class I had the chance to visit PTEF and its founder Graham Enwright in Chiangmai, Thailand. Graham invited me to stay at the school and teach for awhile, but unfortunately my schedule didn't allow for it.
When trying to decide on an organization for this class, I considered the fact that PTEF is not a registered charity a positive. Charity organizations that are not registered can more fully utilize donations; big organizations have high administration costs. To determine the legitimacy of PTEF, I read newspaper articles about it, and I corresponded with a man in Japan who had visited there. Thus, the teachers who join the Charity Teaching group we have formed can share and get information about various worthwhile grassroots charities.
Volunteering
Tourism is the world's second largest industry. Considering the economic power and size of the tourist industry it seems fair to ask how much good all the traveling and package tours to foreign cultures is doing. There are many negative repercussions. Many Native South Americans have been expelled from their traditional territories when those lands get designated as national parks to attract tourists; across Southeast Asia tens of thousands of women, boys and girls are caught in the slavery of prostitution. Since young Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese are traveling more, teachers could provide a valuable service by introducing them to volunteerism as an alternative to mass tourism. This will not only funnel money spent from multinational corporations to the local communities of those countries, but also provide student travelers with a valuable cultural and life experience where they probably will have a far greater chance to use English. Thus far my charity classes have been offered to the community rather than students at the community college where I teach full time. A charity class for community adults could be taught with an optional trip to do volunteer work at the end. As I learned with my lost chance to volunteer teach in Thailand, doing volunteer work needs to be carefully arranged beforehand. Also, doing volunteer work in Japan may be more feasible. Doing volunteer work, however, need not be limited to the type of community charity classes mentioned above, it can as easily be a part of a teacher's regular college, university, high school, or adult education class.
One NGO supporting student volunteers abroad is the American-Vietnamese Friendship Foundation. Participants journey to Vietnam to not only visit cultural and historical sites but volunteer at various locations to help people, especially children. Participants have assisted at orphanages, hospitals and homes for the disabled. They have taught English classes in high schools and at colleges as well as remote village schools. They have had the opportunity to meet and talk with government officials, educators, students, business people and ordinary citizens.
Junaline Banez, a member of the charity-teaching group, writes of her experience volunteering in Vietnam.
It hit me, reading Elaine Mew's article in last year's JET Journal about the Project in Vietnam, that that was something I wanted to do. I wanted to get away from the commercialism and materialism that seems to permeate the developed world.
To begin my mission, I embarked on a fundraising campaign in my town, raising awareness of Vietnam by staging a charity concert. From money to toys to school supplies, gifts of love poured forth from my community. It was rewarding to see people's enthusiasm for and involvement in this worthy humanitarian cause.
Before I left for Vietnam, I told my Japanese students that Vietnamese children are poor. Some may go to school, and some may not be able to. But all children have the same need for shelter, education, health, nutrition, fun and happiness! I wanted to let my Japanese students know how they must appreciate what they have. They're not necessarily luckier than their Vietnamese counterparts, but they do have more. My students felt compassion and joined in the charitable drive for the Project. They enthusiastically made Christmas cards, posters and donated used toys and goods. Their eyes lit up when I told them how happy this would make a Vietnamese child or orphan. Friendships were forged right there.
I had many beautiful and poignant experiences while in Vietnam, but one that I shall never forget happened while visiting the home for the elderly and disabled in Ho Chi Minh City. It was here, while handing out packets of noodles, cookies and 10,000 dong to each resident, that I met Nguyen Thi Hai. She was paralyzed from the waist down, probably due to a stroke. For a brief moment, I thought I was seeing my own grandmother in her nursing home. I held her hand while she uttered something in Vietnamese. I found out that she was 95 years old and had been abandoned by her family. Her strength was belied by the softness of her speech and the gentleness of her manner. I couldn't help thinking that she must have lived through French colonial rule, World War II, and the American War, as they call it. Despite her tears, I sensed there was little that could faze her, certainly not death.
I didn't realize to what extent I would love Vietnam. I rediscovered more than the magic of giving; I rediscovered LIFE! It was an honor to coordinate and organize something truly worthwhile that will stay with me forever. The essence of it all was we received more than we gave. The Project was truly for children, both in Japan and Vietnam. It was dedicated to them, for they are the hopes and dreams of the future.
Teaching for Free
The concept of charity teaching need not be limited to teaching for a cause. It could be the simpler act of offering free language practice to neighborhood children or community adults. In Nagasaki there are at least three free classes for those who want to study Japanese; when I first came to Japan I frequently took classes at the International Community House in Kyoto. These acts of generosity on the part of the Japanese have been an inspiration for me. Adam Beck, also a member of the charity-teaching group, writes of his experience teaching free classes.
Several teachers from Hiroshima International School have been frequenting a small okonomiyaki shop for the past year or so . . . but the workers there -- four friendly young men -- were frustrated because they didn't know enough English to communicate with their foreign customers. So one night, about three months ago, I told them that I'd be willing to teach them once a week for free . . . and since then we've met nearly every Friday morning from 8:00-9:00. I must admit, some Friday mornings I groan at the thought of teaching this early lesson, but after I arrive and see their eager smiles (they've made swift progress because they're such enthusiastic learners), I'm instantly reminded of how gratifying the pure act of teaching English can be, without the expectation of any compensation (beyond the occasional okonomiyaki!).
Starting a Charity Class: Two main challenges are finding students and a venue. After a couple of semesters of scrambling to get enough students I found an easy way. A friend wrote my ad in Japanese and we faxed it to several local newspapers, for free. Between old students and those answering the ads, it's been easy to get nearly ten students for each of the last two semesters.
Ideas for a venue include a local religious institution (for example, a Catholic priest who runs a local youth hostel lets me use a classroom for free); a YMCA, Rotary or Lions club; a local international community center; and the school where you teach. Finally, finding time is always an issue with no easy solution. In "A Path With Heart" Jack Kornfield rhetorically asks, "Where do we put our time, strength, creativity, love? Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?" (p. 18).
Materials
Another way that the Charity Teaching group members could support each other is by sharing appropriate teaching materials. This will include not only general Peace Education materials, but materials specific to a particular charity as well. For example, I am preparing exercises related to PTEF and the social problem of the sex trade that could be shared with other teachers. Other materials I plan to include will be about the many positive aspects of Thai culture. The charity-teaching group could put together packets of materials for a particular culture or cause.
Students in charity classes respond more eagerly to all peace education issues. My classes have discussed issues such as education, child and spouse abuse, and death even though they were not directly related to our cause. And just by attending and contributing, students were actively involved in alleviating suffering somewhere in the world. Ideally, appropriate peace education materials will be part of a fully integrated program, such as one described by Adam Beck below.
A Model Program
TEACH PEACE is a program at Hiroshima International School that offers short-term English classes to the Japanese community and the fees received for these classes are donated to charitable organizations in Japan and around the world, especially those that work with underprivileged children. There are five mission goals: (a) to generate contributions (both monetary and material) for charitable organizations, (b) to offer Japanese students both a useful experience of English and the meaningful experience of supporting charitable organizations through their class fees, (c) to offer teachers the meaningful experience of supporting charitable organizations through volunteer service, (d) to offer a model of meaningful volunteer service for English teachers in Japan and around the world, (e) to unite the HIS community in the meaningful experience of supporting charitable organizations.
There are several characteristics of the TEACH PEACE class. Each class supports two charitable organizations, one in the Hiroshima area and one overseas. Classes are also content-based. Relationships with two charitable organizations -- one local, one international -- are established and the content of the class is prepared according to the specifics of these relationships. For example, if a relationship is established with an orphanage in China, the content of the class will reflect the location of this orphanage, its facilities, its work, the staff, the children who live there, etc. When possible, a class will culminate in taking a trip to one or both sites of the two charitable organizations to meet the people and experience the work firsthand. The visits will be voluntary and will be paid for by individual participants. The community will also be encouraged to contribute to charitable organizations by donating needed material items or by offering letters, artwork, and along with class fees, these materials will either be mailed to the charitable organizations or delivered in person.
The Ripple Effect
Beyond all the materials, advice and ideas members of a charity teaching group can share, perhaps the biggest plus is the support of like-minded teachers, the knowledge that if another teacher can make a tangible donation to the world, I can too. After listening to a teacher at JALT2000 explain about her project to mail old clothes to the Burmese Relief Fund in Thailand, I have done likewise. With the inspiration of Junaline and others, I hope to find the time to introduce students to the concept of volunteer work and get involved myself.
An Invitation
Why not consider becoming part of the Charity Teaching group and organizing your own class for the winter? While this article has given concrete suggestions for charity classes every teacher can design such a class her or himself. For example, after traveling in Indonesia, my friend decided to help a young Indonesian man fulfill his dream to earn a university degree. He did this by allocating the money earned from a private student. On the simplest level, charity teaching can work fine with a private student.
Conclusion
In Asia, many consider alms-giving a way to make merit for future births, but actually the immediate benefits of philanthropy for people, animals, and the earth are easily apparent. We make a tangible connection with those outside ourselves; we look beyond personal issues and problems; we put into practice a root teaching of all religions: to help others. An entire branch of yoga known as karma yoga is based on selfless service. Again quoting Jack Kornfield, "The longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all of our activities. The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing or owning or even understanding. Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love . . . . Out of love, our path can lead us to learn to use our gifts to heal and serve, to create peace around us, to honor the sacred in life, to bless whatever we encounter, and to wish all beings well."
John Small teaches at Nagasaki Junior College of Foreign Languages. He has been teaching charity classes to the Nagasaki community for five semesters.
References
Kornfield, J. (1993). A path with heart. Bantam Books, New York
Notes
Email Contacts:
English for charity chat group: <charityteaching@egroups.com>.
American-Vietnamese Friendship Foundation: <FFAUN@centuryinter.net>
Web Sites:
English for charity web site: <www.charityteaching.f2s.com>.
The Rainforest Site: <www.therainforestsite.com>.
Charity consumer guide: <www.give.org>
200 charitable groups: (Buy products) <GreaterGood.com>
Volunteer projects in Japan: www.vfp.org
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