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The mission of The Kids Abroad Foundation is to organize and provide spoken foreign language learning programs for American elementary and secondary school students, with the goal of enabling the students to communicate with native speaking children of their own age.

At the core of the Foundation’s approach to foreign language instruction is starting to teach foreign languages at an early age when language learning is easiest, so that students can learn to speak and understand other languages naturally by continued exposure, the same way they learn English. The Foundation will experiment with different instructional techniques as resources allow, in an effort to create programs that result in speaking fluency before the students finish high school.

In seeking to achieve these goals, the Foundation will generally adhere to the following principles and policies:

A. The Foundation will engage in fundraising activities in order to provide financial support for its language teaching programs, permitting classes to be offered at low or no cost, enabling wider public participation than would otherwise be possible.

B. Wherever possible, native speaking teachers will be used.

C. English will be used in the classroom as little as possible.

D. Teaching emphasis will be on speaking and aural comprehension, rather on the written language, although reading and writing may be taught as an aid to using the spoken language.

E. When teaching elementary school children, teachers and the Foundation will attempt to design the curriculum to be fun, to keep the students’ interest.

F. Native children’s audio-visual materials in the language being taught will be included in the curriculum where appropriate, to give extended exposure to the spoken foreign language in a medium that is appealing to the children.

G. Whenever feasible, the Foundation’s fundraising activities will be organized around a theme related to the culture of the country or countries where the respective languages are spoken, so that fundraising activities can also offer learning opportunities.

H. From time to time as demand warrants, the Foundation will organize trips abroad for students and their parents, to enable them to visit host families having children of similar ages to the American students, and permitting the children from the different countries to interact with each other, use the language that has been taught, and learn about each other’s culture. Parents or other outside funding will be expected to pay the cost of such trips.

I. German will be the initial language offered, but to the extent feasible a variety of other foreign languages for which there is student demand will be offered as the program expands.

J. The Foundation’s program will initially be offered in Loudoun County, Virginia, but will be expanded to other points within the wider local area, as and if parent interest, volunteer support, and available funding permit.

K. The Foundation will not attempt to duplicate public school foreign language instruction, unless the corresponding public school program is found to be inadequate.