Creating Learners at OpenmindProjects Training Center

Give poor village & migrant girls
and boys a second chance in life!

Empower the impoverished.

You can be part of OMP and help our learners to have a better future and to stop the poverty circle.

Their Poverty Trap

Poor villages, schools, and parents. Village and migrant children grow up to be poor, often being looked after by their grandparents. Their parents had to leave them and the village to earn a living in low-paid jobs in a city or abroad. They had very limited opportunities.

Village women with young girl

Some of these children become our trainees. They never received the education they deserved. Instead, their choice was to stay in their village or accept unsafe, low-paid jobs. Girls risk being exposed to sex trafficking; boys getting involved in drug abuse. Teenagers often don’t know what it means to have a dream, much less how to realize it!

Give them a second chance!

Our challenge is to give these young people hope and a chance to learn, to provide them with better work opportunities. Our challenge is to encourage and empower our young trainees to continue on to take charge of their own learning and become the architects of their own futures.

Our Challenge, using EdTech!

  • How to use technology, modern, innovative learning ideas, and English to help poor young people get out of poverty?
  • The best way to teach our trainees to speak English, how to use their smartphones, computers and the internet, and other important life skills?  
  • If we succeed in these things, the trainees then become the architects of their own futures, and can one day help younger trainees, their village friends and our young campers too!
  • This is our Challenge!

How to give young trainees from Laos, Thailand and Myanmar a second chance? 

We want our trainees to learn how to help themselves. They ‘learn by doing’, with our task and activity- based learning. They learn about a topic. They solve a problem. They learn English, how to use tech and the internet. They learn to help each other! Volunteers help them and they help the volunteers!

At our Training Center, everything is free. Trainees live and learn for free: activities, lodging, food and fun, all is free! But trainees must be ready to help each other, campers, school children and our overseas volunteers!

We prefer ‘Learning By Doing’ to teaching!

We use EdTech, IT, modern, innovative learning ideas and overseas volunteers to create inspiration, knowledge and skills at our Training Center!

Our trainees multi-learn in activity-based learning with concrete tasks and problems to solve.

  • They learn in teams to search for information online in English, to analyze data, solve problems, suggest topics to discuss, and debate solutions.
  • Share their findings in presentations, videos and online.
  • Gain confidence, inspiration, critical and independent-thinking skills.
  • Learn about the environment, climate change, health, hygiene, and food.
  • Prepare to be camp leaders and teach school children.
  • Train campers, schoolchildren and overseas volunteers (culture and language).
  • Learn about and prepare for future jobs.

We create learners!

Well, we empower young villagers and migrants to become learners, to help themselves! Young people become role models and trainers for other young people, and go on to help their poor parents too.

  • With very limited means, we have trained over 400 young trainees over the past 19 years.
  • We have run over 60 learning camps with over 2000 campers.
  • They have learned and gained confidence to speak English, to use technology and the internet to learn, and to want to go on to learn!
  • Some stay on as trainers or team teachers at schools with volunteers and/or camp leaders. Some go on to study. Some find a better job than they had before. Some go back to help in their villages.

Success Stories

Kem and Dee are two young men from Laos who proved that a chance to learn can make a big difference in one's life.

When they were 15 years old, they volunteered to help children in their own community. Kem and Dee then came to Openmind Projects to learn English, IT and life skills. Later they realized that they can use media to help other people.

Right now they're working with an international NGO in Laos and have started their own media company.

Kem and Dee are also our Laos representatives and lead OMP trainees at alumni meetings.
Kem & Dee film maker
Kem & Dee
Videographer/Singer
Trang dropped out of school and escaped from an orphanage.

Currently, Trang owns a computer and smartphone repair shop in Bangkok, and voluntarily repairs our computers.


She's proved that with hard work and by learning IT skills, she can get a good job without the need of university degree.

Trang
Business owner