Client Story - Peter

Having grown up in Bedfordshire and spending most of my working life in logistics I decided as I reached 50 it was time to explore the world.

My wife and I were lucky enough to travel to many countries. 2008 was a very special year as we visited the countries of South East Asia including a small country called Laos where we loved the people and the town of Luang Prabang. On returning home I made a life changing decision to sponsor the education of a young girl living in Luang Prabang. Chansamai was an amazing girl from a very poor family, yet she had a dream of attending university. I was able to make her dream come true by sponsoring her through a small UK charity called LEOT.

We returned to Laos in 2009 and met Chansamai and other students helped by LEOT. 2010 was a terrible year marked by the death of my lovely wife Catriona, brother Paul and sister-in-law Pamela. Travelling was very limited fitted round hospital visits. I made another big decision in 2011 having spent time mourning the loss of my family. With the support of daughter Claire, I returned to Laos and purchased land to build a small school. Building started on Christmas Day 2011 and the LEOT School opened in September 2012.

Life has always been a challenge dealing with the local authorities due to the large cultural differences between us, yet we have solved our differences and continue to work together. Having retired at the end of 2011 to spend my time concentrating in the school, Laos became my second home with my time spent evenly between the UK and Laos.

Over the years we have helped over 2500 disadvantaged young people with classes building a local team of young Lao teachers. Our plans to do more to help disadvantaged students. Expanded with the building of rural village schools at the start of 2017. To date we have built 18 schools and have plans to build a further 6. We also ran a sewing school from 2017 to 2025 to support disadvantaged women gain skills to find work. We estimate we have helped over 10000 young children with our building programme together with 250 women in our sewing
school.

2020 was a remarkable year due to the covid pandemic. All foreigners returned home and all our activities were suspended It was not a good year for me as I suffered a stroke and heart attack in October 2020 and spent four months in hospital before returning home with little movement.

Luckily daughter Claire found Home Instead and over the next year their wonderful care helped me recover. I am so lucky that their care still continues making a real difference to my life.

2022 gave me a new beginning and with the help of Claire I returned to Laos to support our project.

Although disabled, I am happy my story still continues and I have just returned from a seven week visit to the school. I plan a further visit later in the year.