For those of you who are new here at Bilkent, the project, which is only one of the community service projects run by the Dean of Students' Office, consists of teaching basic Windows-application skills along with webpage design and computer-aided presentation techniques, to high-school students in need of voluntary help. The "teachers" are Bilkent students who have volunteered to take part in the project. Although the aim is to help others less fortunate than ourselves, the project gives volunteers the chance to learn how to handle a group of students, how to prepare a lecture, and, perhaps most interestingly, how to assess students. Above all, volunteers get the satisfying feeling of sharing their skills with the community.

Over the past 5 years, close on 100 Bilkent students have taken part in the project, many of them for two or more years running, teaching in total more than 650 high-school students basic computer skills. The project is coordinated by Nermin Fenmen (fenmen@bilkent.edu.tr) who will provide you with notes and exercises to carry out each week. Transportation to and from the schools is also provided. You are even provided with a packed lunch which you share with your students during break-time. So it only remains for you to be there-and to share, and to feel what it is like to be a teacher!

And now for the big surprise: a new project has been included in the program. Bilkent volunteers will now have the chance of teaching English to 8 - 9 year olds. Since this is in its first year, the project has been kept to a smaller scale, where the 3rd graders of an elementary school up in Kayaş will be learning English and having a lot of fun too (whether it turns out to be more fun than English, or vice versa, remains to be seen). The coordinator of the project is Elizabeth Wadden from BUPS (ewadden@bups.bilkent.edu.tr) who, together with another colleague, coordinated the English program for Kaynaşlı last year.