About

Our mission

Our mission at Laowai Teachers is to connect you with teaching opportunities, help you make informed decisions and offer an efficient and a non-biased service.

What we do

We prepare you for life abroad and offer you continued support. Our teacher placement services are free of charge and there are no deductions from your salary what so ever. We make a fee from the schools we partner with. We also offer notary services for South African documents catering to South African expats and those intending to work abroad.

It all started when…

I decided to teach abroad a few years ago.I had no idea how untrustworthy and unreliable recruitment agencies could be. As a result I ended up with an agency that was squandering half of my salary, but that’s a story for another day. Trust me I’ve had my fair share of bad agencies. The difficulties faced by prospective teachers when searching for teaching jobs abroad propelled me to do something about it. 
 Laowai is the Mandarin word for foreigner. I live in  rural China where I turn heads everywhere I go. I suspect I might be the only black in this town. So I’m called “laowai” or “laoshi” half of the time. That gave birth to our company name Laowai Teachers, which simply means foreign teachers.

 I run Laowai Teachers with my doting husband. I live in the rural town of Luannan, Tangshan. I have been teaching abroad for four years now. My first teaching job abroad was in China, I then moved to South Korea and  I find myself back in China yet again. My husband deals with day-to-day running of the business and walk in clients from his Pretoria office. He deals with the notary side of things, while I deal with teacher recruitment and schools. We have three part time assistants who help us. The notary services came as an after- thought, my husband has helped  friends with apostilles, embassy verifications, visa applications and others. He started getting a lot of referrals. He then suggested we incorporate the notary services and as they say the rest is history.

Ayanda Ndamane

Director & Senior Recruiter

Laowai Teachers