History 

About one year before the M30 cohort came to Moldova, previous volunteers participated in an extensive and highly celebrated "re-writing” project with the Ministry of Education. Peace Corps Volunteers like Tim Schneider and Sarah Ewell were pioneers for the project and helped design new English manuals for the English Education program in Moldova. The only issue with the project was that the new listening components were left without an audio source. As volunteers across Moldova work day in and day out with English Educators they have had the opportunity to listen to both the praises and main concerns about the new manuals. One major concern is that there are no audio resources to play the listening components. While the teachers are more than capable of reading the listening transcripts on their own, they see the value in listening to native speakers. With this concern in mind, Peace Corps volunteers embarked on an audio recording project. 

 

The process has been absolutely wonderful. The decision to use an online platform attempts to make it easy to deliver the material to educators and hopefully encourage the use of technology in classrooms. It will be quite an easy transition for English teachers who have Peace Corps volunteers as partners in the classroom. The nature of textbooks is that, fortunately, they change over time! Our hope is that this online platform will serve as an easily adaptable source for supplemental audio material. With all of the teachers requesting audio, it is apparent that the demand for audio is high. Whether the audio is used in classrooms or assigned for homework, the English Education program in Moldova will be able to utilize the listening components of the new manuals. Volunteers are hopeful that the online site will be a sustainable solution for educational needs in Moldova!