Na Sam Liang Primary School

The Na Sam Liang Primary School is located in the outskirsts of a small town of Sukama in the Champasak Province in Southern Lao.

The Na Sam Liang community is comprised of over 60,000 villagers of a minority ethnic group who were relocated to the area over 60 years ago by the Lao government after an epidemic outbreak.

The area is extremely poverished and has no electricity nor a reliable safe drinking water supply.

In 1978 the community built its first primary school. However, the frail wooden building did not last long and was completely destroyed in 1994 by a severe storm. The villagers renovated the building many times over the last years but with only limited resources.

Before we began construction of a new building, the existing building was extremely rundown and heavily infested with termites which further led to the foundation being exceedingly unsafe. Additionally, there were no sufficient toilets within the school with only a small outdoor toilet existing with sewerage leading straight on to the main drinking water supply.

The newly constructed school building offers 236 primary school students aged between 6 and 10 years old the opportunity to study in safe and clean conditions.

The school is fully recognized by the Laotian Government and the Education Department who are responsible for the daily running of the school. The Government have also provided 3 fully qualified teachers for the school. The new building houses six new class rooms with a total space of 336m2 and a separate toilet block with four toilets. New school furniture has also been provided for each of the class rooms.

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.

A new playground was recentlly built thanks to the financial support of Child’s Dream.

Due to a prolonged rainy season construction of the school took longer than originally expected as travelling in the area was made virtually impossible.

As with all the Child’s Dream projects, community participation in the construction of the school is heavily encouraged. This gives the villagers a sense of pride and ownership of the school and leads to better and well-informed manintenance of the building by the community. For the Na Sam Liang Primary School, the community provided some free and unskilled labour for the construction as well as wood.

Child’s Dream purchased the required construction material directly in a shop in Sukuma district and the same shop was also responsible for the transportation to the village. All workers were paid in cash by Child’s Dream directly after each accomplished construction step.

A water purification plant was very kindly donated by the SkyJuice Foundation and installed by the Child’s Dream team in late 2011.

Dad visited the school in 2011 and was very impressed with the quality standard of the buildings and the water purification plant installation.

The total implementation costs for this project were approximately 3% above budget primarily due to a stronger THB against USD exchange rate.

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 provide stationery as mentioned above and will also carry out follow-up visits for monitoring purposes and to check on needed renovations.

The closest airport to the school is in Pakse which is about 3 hours drive away.

Flights leave daily from Bangkok to the Lao capital Vientiane. From Vientiane you can fly to Pakse with Loa Airlines.

Due to Loa being a communist run country you may only visit the school if you are accompanied by a reprensentative 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. Please contact Alex on alshaw03@gmail.com