PETRO POROSHENKO MET GOCAMPS FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS

On 2 July President Petro Poroshenko met the volunteers who came to Ukraine to teach children the English language in GoCamps.

For more than three weeks 117 volunteers from 38 countries of the world have been helping Ukrainian kids to break through the language barrier and practice conversational English in the most advanced language camps introduced by NGO GoGlobal this year. After the camps completed, President initiated a meeting with volunteers to listen to their impressions of the project and Ukraine. Ten volunteers from the United States of America, Indonesia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Denmark, Mexico, China and India visited the Presidential Administration and promised Petro Poroshenko that they will come back the next year to go on with their volunteering mission.

During the meeting Petro Poroshenko expressed his support to the GoGlobal initiative and pointed out the importance of involving civic societies to promote learning foreign languages among Ukrainians. To President’s opinion Ukrainians don’t have 12 years to learn English academically, therefore it’s crucial to popularize fresh methods of language teaching, for example, involving foreign volunteers.

GoGlobal founders Mustafa Nayem, Oksana Movchan and Oksana Nechyporenko joined the volunteers at the meeting with President.

Mustafa Nayem promised to set much more ambitious goals for the next year:

“If this year we managed to reach almost 9000 kids all over Ukraine with 117 volunteers, then next year we will invite 1000 language volunteers so that 90000 children could take part in language camps.”

In return Petro Poroshenko expressed his hope that volunteers will fall in love with our country and go home taking a part of Ukraine in their hearts and next year will come back with their friends to continue teaching kids and promised to support GoGlobal in year 2017.

After the meeting the President Lucas van Opstal from the Netherlands who worked in the GoCamps in Lvivska and Kirovogradska oblasts mentioned Petro Poroshenko’s openness: “President is a very kind and light-hearted person. It was very easy to talk to him and he’s very optimistic about Ukraine’s development. I’m here for the first time and next year, if there’s such an opportunity, I will certainly come back.”

Language camps GoCamps have taken place in 126 schools all over Ukraine from 06 to 24 June in 90 cities, towns and villages of Ukraine. Next week some of the volunteers will go on to teach English in a site GoCamp for school children from Lughanks and Donetsk oblasts which will take place in a town of Voloodarka, Kyiv oblast.

GoGlobal is a civic initiative aiming at promotion and popularization of foreign language learning in Ukraine. To improve the level of English language proficiency among Ukrainian kids GoGlobal launched GoCamps project in 2016. GoCamps are advanced language camps where learning English is carried out with the help of foreign volunteers. The main focus is on conversational English and overcoming of the language barrier. Language learning in camps is based on most modern and advanced international approaches and methods.