Volunteering at Cofradia Bilingual School by Melanie Sim

My husband and I found Cofradia Bilingual School (www.cofradiaschool.com) via this website, and exchanged only 5 emails with the Australian owner Ben Udy and his Honduran wife Mirna before flying to Honduras, Central America to teach for a year. We decided on Cofradia as it didn't require Spanish (we had none) and the organisation also fully supported us for the whole year. This was a big incentive as many others expected you to pay for your own lodging and we didn't have that kind of money.

This was maybe naive to not even ring Ben or confirm with other volunteers what the school was like, and yet we had one of the best years of our life, teaching kids English and other subjects, getting to know families and making very close friends, and learning conversational Spanish. We have just left (June 08) and are feeling ¨homesick¨ not for Australia and vegemite but for baleadas and totillas!

We were expected to teach a full class of kids (up to 18 for us) on Day 1 with no training or assistance, just an English curriculum and workbook. This was fine for us because we are really hard workers, and love kids, and even though we had no previous experience with kids it only took a month to get into a routine. I'm an ex journalist and my husband is an environmental scientist.

The kids had no English at all, they were aged 5 to 6 years old, but the older grades did have some english. By the end of the year our kids (Kindergarten for Tobi and Grade 1 for me) were understanding everything we said in English and speaking small sentences, very rewarding for us!

You are supplied with a house, lunch and recess every day, and if you stay for longer than 3 months you are given a stipend to cover dinner food. Many people teach english for money as well at nights. We didn't do this as we enjoyed just spending time with families informally in the evenings. There are only 20 gringoes at any one time in the town, basically the volunteer teachers and some scientists who work in the nearby mountains. This is great if you want to really ¨immerse¨ yourself in Honduran culture, as many other towns in Honduras have a larger gringo population.

We learnt Spanish quickly, as we did a 2 week language course in Copan Ruinas (3 hours from Cofradia) before school started, then asked the Prinicipal to give us lessons. We also tutored English in the nights to a family in return for a meal and conversation in Spanish. They became our ¨family¨ in Honduras.

The most important thing we learnt straight off is that if you wanted something done at the school or around your house, you had to organise it yourself and get it off the ground. A good example is the Australia Day fundraiser we organised, the owners and prinicipal of the school were very enthusiastic but it was up to us to find the bbq to cook the sausages, buy the food, organise the music, the activities etc. It was a great day (very full on for us) and we raised a bit of money for the school and now all the kids know what a boomerang is, and have tasted vegemite! This also means you have heaps of freedom to do what you want to do with the kids, if you want to run a cooking lesson then you can do it!

We also made contact with lots of our neighbours, landlord and locals in town so when we did need something (e.g. a bbq for the fundraiser) the landlord supplied one for free. This got easier as we learnt more Spanish.

In conclusion it is a fantastic school and needs hard working teachers to keep it that way. Gerardo the current director is really supportive and bilingual so it is easy to communicate with him. We would highly recommend this experience to anyone, and if you have 1 month, 3 months or 12 months you will be useful at the school!


- Melanie Sim
   (26-Jun-2008)

Melanie Sim and Tobi Edwards (from Australia, both aged 27) volunteered at Cofradia School from July 2007 to June 2008