Open for a Fresh Start
Every August our English courses take a break whilst our teachers have their holidays, but that makes September all the more important as a fresh start, launching us into the new academic year. This year it was even more so, as we hosted our very first Open House/Open Day event.
To give people in the city a better understanding of who we are and what we do, we invited the public and local media to come and see our projects first hand. We want to demonstrate that we are a transparent and open organisation with nothing to hide, since nonprofit operations are often met with much suspicion.
The Open House event gave people the opportunity to see the warehouse where humanitarian aid is sorted and stored, observe our Community Care team in action doing activities with disadvantaged children, take part in English conversation practice, go through the AIDS Xperience simulation, or just enjoy a quiet drink in the café.
Feedback from the event was very positive, and we were featured on local news with a remarkably accurate report of the day. We have also been seeing longer term benefits, with larger numbers of students attending our Conversation Clubs and Friday night events, and the new semester of English courses setting a new record with a total of 335 registered students! That’s certainly a good way to open.
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