Who am I and what is this blog about

Hi! My name is Alicja, I am a neurobiopsychology student from Poland.

A while ago I was wondering what is it that I want to do during summer. Over past couple of years my plan was to go to England and work there as an Activity Leader and then do some travelling. It was an amazing experience which I recommend to everyone. At first, I was not a big fan of children to be honest, especially the ones that were not related to me. However, as it turned out, working with kids and teenagers can be very rewarding. I was so amazed how thankful they were for the time I spent with them during activities, excursions or only talking to them. Probably all of us was always very enthusiastic about spending time with people who were older, at least I know I was and I think that was it as well.

For that reason I started to want more and go beyond being an Activity Leader. I decided I wanted to do TEFL course to be able to teach English abroad. Unfortunately, those courses are not cheap and at that time I could not afford to enroll on one. However, one time when I was looking through some discount sites, I came across a discount on an online TEFL course from some Cambridge site. It was so cheap that I could not believe it (150-hours online course). Being to excited, I bought it and after around 2 months, passed it. I thought that it will be enough just to pass this online course and I will find some work, e.g. in Asia for the summer. However, it turned out to be much more difficult than I thought since you need to have experience and preferably be a native English speaker and be available for approx. 1 year time. Even if you wanted to only volunteer, the costs of program fees were over the roof. How can you ask someone for paying to voluneer?

Browsing through all those websites, I finally found something that was worth sticking to - ETA4 (http://eta4.org/). ETA4 is a 501(c)3 non­‐profit dedicated to the advancement of English education for underprivileged children abroad, and provides no-­cost, rewarding, and successful English instruction to achieve that goal. This is why this blog began. I got accepted as a volunteer to this program to Hue in Vietnam. I can be the one who will change the lives of those children but I can not do it without your help.

The program is free, there is accommodation and food provided, however I have to take care of transportation costs and all the preparations before travelling there. My goal is to fundraise 3000 PLN (approx. 720 EUR) to cover all the major expenses.

In return, every person who donates even a small amount of money will get a personalized postcard from Vietnam written by the children I will teach. I hope that will make you smile and realize how much you have influenced someone's life not leaving your house.

On this blog, I will keep you updated about all the progress, preparations and the time in Vietnam if I manage to go there.

There are 2 ways how you can donate money:

1. For international transactions (not from Poland): I will soon open a PayPal donate service.
2. For people from Poland and international transactions as well: here are my account details

Alicja Płaczkiewicz

ul. Braille'a 54a

76-200 Słupsk

39 2490 0005 0000 4100 4373 3001

Alior Bank S.A.

SWIFT: ALBPPLPW

IBAN: PL39 2490 0005 0000 4100 4373 3001

In the title, please write 'Donation for Vietnam' or 'Darowizna Wietnam'

After you transfer the money, please send me your address at alaplaczkiewicz@gmail.com so I can send you the postcard from Vietnam!

Thanks for reading and thank you for every penny. I really appreciate that and the kids from Vietnam too.