Here's Why International Volunteers Are Coming to Ukraine to Teach

This year the GoCamp project will bring more than 600 international volunteers from 140 countries to Ukraine. Each of them will teach students in various cities and towns socially important subjects in English for three weeks.

Hromadske set out to find out more about this innovative educational project and why its volunteers chose Ukraine.

GoCamp is an intitiative of GoGlobal and the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science, focusing on developing the English language in Ukraine. The project is supported by the President of Ukraine, the US Embassy in Ukraine, United Nations Volunteers and others.

In 2016, 120 volunteers from 40 countries participated in the GoCamp pilot project, attracting English speakers to the Ukrainian education system. For the organizers, who spread information about the program through Ukrainian embassies, universities, diasporas, UN Volunteer and ISIC, the fourfold increase in the size of the project was a real challenge.

GoCamp organizer and director of the NGO Global Office, Oksana Nechyporenko said that after the selection process there are 611 remaining schools across Ukraine that want to join the GoCamp network.

"We selected the teachers based on motivation for new knowledge and the schools motivation for taking volunteers. Through the efforts of American, British, German and French embassies, we have received 611 teachers for training in new teaching methods, such as teaching English through play and other interactive methods," she said.

According to Oksana, the teachers are developing GoCamp at their schools themselves, using the proposed methodology and the system of international volunteers.

Co-organizer of the project, Ukrainian journalist and MP Mustafa Nayem, told Hromadske that training will be provided for the international teachers upon arrival to teach them about Ukraine and prepare them for teaching.

"We showed them a film about the revolution, talked about the war and about the history Ukraine. Then they are going on a 5-day training session on how to work with children," he said.

The volunteers will then be divided into four groups. The first teaches the basics of democracy, government and law. The second focuses on sciences, including physics, mathematics and computer science. The third teaches healthy lifestyles and the fourth focuses on civil society. Every teacher is responsible for a subject that is in their field. As Nayem underscored, "English is a tool, not a goal."