Luke Hogan spent 6 weeks over the summer in Ethiopia. His first three weeks were at the Montessori teacher training institute and Women’s Empowerment Centre run by the Daughters of Charity in Sodo and his second three weeks were at the Ambo Lazarist Deaf School. Luke helped the Montessori teachers revise for their exams and practiced conversational English with the kindergarten teachers. Moving to the Women’s Empowerment Centre he taught intensive English daily to full classes. While in Ambo Luke taught English classes to up to 39 teachers and 54 students. Some of the teachers were from the deaf school across the road and he had a sign language interpreter in the classroom to assist.

Luke said “the teachers did 5 hours of English lessons a day and by our last lesson it was amazing to see the progress they had made and their increased confidence in speaking English. The fact that these teachers showed up every day and spent 5 hours a day practicing English, their 3rd language, while on their summer holidays was even more surprising and showed a level of interest/willingness to learn I had never seen before! I still can’t believe the level of gratitude that the teachers and students had for my lessons despite it being such a small amount of time from my summer holidays. When leaving they gave me a cultural outfit including long legged bottoms, a long-sleeved shirt in their Provincial colours, a Jebena (a traditional coffee pot) and a coffee set. Ethiopia was an amazing experience, and they couldn’t have made me feel more welcome and at home in the short time I was there.”