Pang Mon Primary & Nursery Schools

The Pang Mon Primary and Nursery Schools are located in the Northern part of Lao in the Xaignabouli province.

This community is highly remote and isolated as it is situated more than 18km from the main town and is approximately 3-4km for the Thai-Loation border. Which by Western standards does not sound very far. However, the extremely poor road conditions coupled with the lack of basic infrastructure makes it challenging to reach the area especially during the rainy season when many of the roads are cut off.

The Pang Mon is an indigenous community comprising of close to 160 families.

With a small amount of financial help from the International Fund of Agriculture Development, the villagers were able to build a small school for the community in 1996.

However, being the only nursery and primary school in the area, the community quickly began to outgrow the existing building. Over 55 students were being taught in each classroom and the nursery classes had to be closed to accomodate the increasing number of primary students.

The condition of all the buildings was very poor and not suitable for classes to be conducted in. Furthermore, the existing toilets provided were unhygienic and in desperate need of repair.

Two new classrooms were built as an extension of the existing Primary School building to accomodate the growing number of students.

Another building was erected for a new nursery school providing a chance for the younger children in the community to resume schooling helping them to build a solid foundation for thir primary education in the future.

Four new toilets were built and all classrooms were fitted out with brand new furniture.

In total there are over 220 children attending the Pang Mon Primary School with 5 teachers and 42 children attending the Nursery School with 3 teachers.

Both schools are fully recognized by the Laotian Government and the Education Department continue to be responsible for the daily running of the schools.

As with all schools implemented by Child’s Dream a student body has been established within the school to provide informal feedback on the school’s progress to ensure that we are always kept abreast of any potential issues or significant events in regards to the schools development and maintenance.

As with all Child’s Dream projects, the community is strongly encouraged to participate in construction. This gives the villagers a sense of pride and ownership of the schools, which will hopefully lead to the community members taking much better care of the buildings on their own.

For the Pang Mon schools the villagers contributed to the construction by leveling the land, providing wood and helping with transportation of goods and supplies. A foreman from the village managed the daily construction work and all materials were sourced in either nearby Thailand (only 4km from the border) or transported from Xiang Hong in Lao.

The schools were finished being built in November 2011 which was quite a bit longer than originally expected. This was due to an unusually prolonged heavy rainy season making transport into the school and scheduling of building extremely difficult.

Construction began in June 2010 and was completed in November 2011.

The prolonged and unusually heavy rainy season put considerable pressure on the budget, with total costs being approximately 23% over what was expected. A weaker than expected THB/USD exchange rate also affected the total cost.

Sustainability: Sustainability of the school’s activities is guaranteed by close cooperation with the government, which will cover all teacher salaries as well as some of the ongoing costs. Child’s Dream will carry out follow-up visits for monitoring purposes and to check on needed renovations.

There are 2 options in travelling to the school.

The first is to fly to Luang Prabang in Loa via either Bangkok or Chiang Mai. It is then approximately a 7 hour drive by car as is mostly dirt roads to Pang Mon.

The second option is to fly firstly into Chiang Mai in Thailand and then drive across the border with one of the Child’s Dream team to the school which should take around 8 hours by car.

*NB - in Loa you may only visit the school if you are accompanied by a representative of the Loa Department of Education and a member of Child’s Dream team. If you would like to visit the school we would be more than happy to arrange the trip for you.