Meet Our Team

Our Team

Face-to-face programme delivery has been paused and the Wellington-based language school was closed after Term 2, 2020. We are in a hiatus to review how we can best deliver our Foreign Language programmes to children and families, while keeping to our values and being accessible and sustainable in this Covid backdrop. We currently have no staff employed, but these lovely people were part of our team in 2020!

Ni Hao Children’s Community
  • Ay Dih Beh
  • Nan Wang
  • Chien-Chi Lin
  • Li Ling Ho
  • Yue Pan

Ay Dih Beh | 马爱娣 Mǎ ài dì |Mandarin Chinese Language Teacher (part-time)

Ay Dih was born in Malaysia and had taught in a primary school in Singapore for 12 years before coming to New Zealand. Her academic qualifications include a Master of Arts degree in Chinese Studies ( National University of Singapore) and Postgraduate Diploma in Education ( Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education, Singapore). Her teaching philosophy is that a classroom should be safe and stimulating to help develop a child’s passion for learning. She is pastoral and enjoys spending time with children during lessons. Ay Dih joined the team in September 2018.

Nan Wang | 王楠 Wáng Nán  |  Mandarin Chinese Language Teacher (part-time), from November 2019

Nan is a registered teacher in New Zealand, currently completing a postgraduate diploma in Education at Massey University, with eight years of language teaching experience and a well-rounded skill set from organisational and problem-solving skills to communication and management skill. She believes that learning is a lifelong process. Teachers should expose the students to experiences that allow them to test their understanding of knowledge and strengthen learning capabilities or encourage new learning skills to emerge. To make this happen, she strives to act as a guide instead of a lecturer in the class, offering her students various interactive learning activities to deepen their understanding of knowledge and opportunities to develop their learning skills in a stimulating and inspiring environment. She also believes that all students are unique and must have a stimulating educational environment where they can grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Therefore, it is her desire to create this type of learning atmosphere where students can meet their full potential.  

Yue (Cecilia) Pan | 潘悦 Pān Yuè |  Mandarin Chinese Language Teacher (part-time, reliever), from February 2020

Yue joined our team in February 2020. She originally came from Mainland China, working as a journalist in Shanghai from 2002 to 2006. She moved to Wellington in 2006 and completed a graduate diploma in Psychology at Massey University in 2008. She then worked in a jewellery wholesale business until 2018 in Wellington, covering multiple roles including project management and office management. She loves the work she has been involved in and enjoys communicating with people.

Yue is a Wellingtonian, and has a husband and 8 year old son. She enjoys filling her spare time with a range of creative and active endeavours such as photography, video editing, reading and swimming. Yue is excited to be part of the team at Ni Hao Children’s Community and working alongside everyone to create and nurture a positive, uplifting, and successful collaborative learning environment.

Qiubo (Anastasia) Li | 李秋搏 Lǐ Qiūbó |  Mandarin Chinese Language Teacher (part-time), to November 2019

Qiubo is from Shandong province, in north east China, and has been working on a Bachelor of Commerce and Education at Victoria University of Wellington since July 2016, with future plans of qualifying as a teacher in New Zealand. She has worked at a foreign languages school / kindergarten during her summer breaks while she was in high school in Shandong, and most recently was teaching there in November 2016 to February 2017. Qiubo has a passion for teaching, enjoys spending time with children, and believes that she learns from the children as much as they learn from her.

Chien-Chi Lin | 林千琦 Lín qiān qí | Education Programme Manager (part-time)

Chien-Chi is from Taipei, Taiwan. She has spent a number of years in Australia and has been living in New Zealand for over five years. She has worked as a teacher for Ni Hao Children’s Community previously, and is currently a manager for MOJO Coffee. She was an EAL (English as Additional Language) teacher for three years in Taiwan and then gained a Graduate Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at Waikato Institute of Technology in 2015. With her strong TESOL background, she sees MSOL as a mission to not only to pass on the language but also the culture to the future generation.

Li Ling Ho | 何丽玲  Hé Lì Líng |  Founder & Programme Director (voluntary)

Li Ling is involved with the general management, programme, delivery and teacher training, admin, accounts and everything else that helps keep this ticking.

Li Ling was born in Singapore and moved to Wellington with her family when she was 6. Unfortunately, she is not a fluent Mandarin speaker herself (still learning!) as it was dry, irrelevant and not seen as a positive thing to be communicating in anything other than English in the 80’s and 90’s in NZ. She misses Singapore’s multilingualism and enjoys hearing different languages being spoken around her. She also understands how it feels to be learning a language that no one in the family has any fluency in, and applies a non-native speaker approach to the charity’s programmes.

This charity was founded as Li Ling wanted to provide a supportive place where children could learn Mandarin as a conversational language in a fun and engaging way. She is passionate about making Mandarin learning fun, interactive, relevant, and accessible to children and families who are learning it as an additional language i.e. “MSOL”: Mandarin for Speakers of Other Languages. She loves seeing the children enjoy their learning, while growing in confidence and language skill. It is so important to provide appealing opportunities for children to hear and use language from an early age.

Our Board of Trustees

Many thanks goes out to our Board for their support of this initiative!
Mei Ho | Li Ling Ho | Alsu Sworder

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the following for their kindness, time or support at some point for Ni Hao Children’s Community:

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