Posted by Kevin Morgan on Tue, Jul 06, 2010
It's always great to see positive results, especially when you're involved in projects that can really help people. This weekend I returned to Asia and attended an event with some of our teachers and volunteers, and ... even better ... some of the students we work with from the "Children's Village" orphanage in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. A vanload of children from this unique educational community, complete with their Thai traditional instruments, came to Bangkok and entertained us ... actually wowed us with their self-confidence, their charm, and their English skills.
These
are children of poverty, children of neglect, and children of abuse. They learn from volunteers on our programs. It is great to have engaging conversations (in English) with 11-14 year olds that many people would have given little chance to develop skills to succeed ... but these students are making giant strides.
Moo Baan Dek ("Children's Village") is a very special place. The children are active members of the community. They participate in decision-making, rule-making, even discipline when necessary. It's self-described as "experimental", and "alternative". I describe it as "wonderful"!
You don't need to be a specialist, an educator, have teaching credentials to be a successful volunteer on a GeoVisions program like this. You just need to care, and be ready to give of yourself. One thing that was all our volunteers agreed on -- you get back a lot more than you give!
GeoVisions has many opportunities in Thailand for you to give of yourself. You may want to work on one of our Volunteer Projects or teach conversational English to a family or a business or community group on our Conversation Corps and Conversation Partner Programs.
The photos on this page were taken by Phillip Chappell, who coordinates our programs in Thailand. We thank him for his photos and the help he gives to all of our volunteers and teachers in Thailand. More pictures can be found on the Moo Baan Dek Facebook group page.
Posted by Randy LeGrant on Fri, Jun 25, 2010
Suck My Nation! The newest addition to the GeoVisions family of volunteer Blogs. Read Don's Blog here.
Conversation Corps member, Don Deerie, is writing an amazing Blog with the most unique photos of life in Thailand I've seen. Don is volunteering to live with a family in Thailand, and teach them English around 15 hours each week. In return, he's getting free room and board with the family. At GeoVisions, we call that Conversation Corps.
How many people get to actually live with a Thai family for a month? It is a rare opportunity, and Don is making the most of it. Here is an entry from June 15:
All smiles in the ราชอาณาจักรไทย
-2nd week in Thailand
-location: Trat
-3rd day as an English tutor to 2 students
-progress: hopeful.
I'm living with my host family for a month. I have my own room (a room larger than my parents'). The family owns a motorbike shop.
Don is a student at Bates College in Maine and speaks Spanish, Dutch and is learning Czech. He brings to the Conversation Corps a great sense of humor and tons of excitement for Thailand, his host family and teaching them some conversational English.
If you have any interest in Thailand or what it's like to live with a family in that stunning country...or if you have questions about joining the Conversation Corps, you will enjoy reading Suck My Nation.
Do you worry about not being able to teach English? Leave us your comments below! The Conversation Corps is about teaching conversational English. Anyone can do it. What are your thoughts about Don's Blog or the Corps? Please leave them below.
Posted by Kevin Morgan on Mon, Apr 12, 2010
Splash!
Happy New Year! It's Songkran. April 13-15. The Thai New Year. We have GeoVisions teachers, volunteers and staff in Thailand now.
In Bangkok there is political turmoil. Red shirts trying to bring down the government. Red shirts being manipulated by an outside force.
But ... it's New Year. Songkran. The Water Festival.
The water will wash away past transgressions.
The sprinkling of water on friends and visitors is a way to appeal to the higher powers to bring water to the fields for a new rice crop. The sprinkling has turned into splashing. The splashing has turned into dousing. In Thailand ... at New Year ... you are going to get VERY wet. Thais will spread a floury paste on your face ... on your neck ... it wards away evil.
The fun of the New Year lasts for three or four days. How wet can you get?
Happy New Year. It's 2553! Come to Thailand. Teach. Volunteer. Discover. LIVE!
GeoVisions in Thailand includes Teaching, Volunteering, Conversation Tutoring in a Classroom or with a Family. Join us.
Posted by Kevin Morgan on Wed, Mar 10, 2010
This week, close to 500 university students from Thailand arrive in the US on the GeoVisions Work and Travel Program. GeoVisions is designated by the US State Department to sponsor exchange students who come to work in seasonal jobs in the US. This year, while there are fewer jobs, and, thus, fewer students, there's still a good chance you might run into some of our students -- especially if you are visiting a major theme park, or even a national park. You might have some of them serve you at a McDonalds in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio or Florida. These students are from Thai universities, and the State Department gives young people the chance to learn about America by having the ability to work for a couple months during their school vacation. Thai students have a vacation from March to June. So ... if you see a Thai student in your travels, be sure to say hello
(Sa-wa-dee Kap --- or Sa-wa-dee Kah if you are female).
If you prefer to meet Thais in Thailand, you might want to consider our
Conversation Corps-Thailand program. You can go to the "Land of Smiles" and live with the family of one of our exchange students and help them improve their conversational English, while you learn Thai, discover Thai customs or culture or history, or just enjoy sightseeing in your free time -- for one, two or three months.
For now ... WELCOME TO AMERICA to our Thai Work and Travel Students.
Posted by Kevin Morgan on Mon, Mar 08, 2010
One of the joys of travel for me is to see how people move about cities -- we don't do it so well in my country, America. On our Volunteer and Teaching programs, our explorers learn so much about how cities and countries really work. I had the opportunity to live in Bangkok and meet our volunteers - great people doing great things. But, they needed to move about the city ... and sometimes it could be exciting. Bangkok has taxis, skytrains, subways, tuk-tuks ... and my favorite, the Motorcycle Taxi. For a little over a dollar you can get just about anywhere, AND enjoy a ride that any theme park would be "thrilled" to host. Enjoy the video!
GeoVisions has many programs to give travellers a chance to discover the wonders of Thailand, and get a chance to experience Bangkok - Teach in Thailand, Conversation Corps and Conversation Partner, Volunteer in Thailand. Can't make it to Thailand? Maybe you'll run into one of our hundreds of Thai students who come to the US every year on our Work and Travel Programs.
Do you have some hair-raising stories to share when you have been zipping around a city?
If you can take away something useful from this post, please consider leaving a comment (below) or subscribing to the feed (above) to have future posts delivered to your feed reader. You can also subscribe via email (in the upper right corner). Over on the right we have made it easy for you to become a Fan of GeoVisions on Facebook and to Follow Us on Twitter.
Posted by Randy LeGrant on Mon, Oct 30, 2006
The flight to Chiang Mai from Bangkok takes only one hour. In that short amount of time, I left behind a bustling, urban, major-city and arrived in a smaller city surrounded by mountains, lush forests, and over 300 Buddhist Temples dotting the sides of the local hills.
Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second-largest city, but that fact never occurred to me as I walked along the quiet streets and in and out of meticulous gardens. In Thai, Chiang Mai means “New Walled City.” New, in this case, means 1296, when Chiang Mai was founded.
From there, I traveled 3 hours further North by car to the Phayao Province, virtually enveloped by mountains, valleys and National Forests. The city of Phayao was founded in 1096. With only modest facilities and conveniences, it is an enchanting community with delightful natural beauty and fascinating religious sites. It is 45 kilometers from here, into an even more rural area, that I arrived at a very unique GeoVisions volunteer project.
Any attempt to categorize the site is going to be tricky. Baan Kru Mookda (in Thai it means “house of Kru Mookda”) can best be described as a camp for underprivileged Thai students run by Kru Mookda and her family. Mrs. Mookda, seen here in the bright yellow shirt, received the 1999 Race Against Poverty award from Kofi Anan on behalf of the United Nations. Here on our web site, you will soon be able to view an excerpt from a documentary filmed for the United Nations Development Project about Mrs. Kru Mookda. The film was premiered at the awards ceremony in New York.
Spending part of a day with Kru Mookda was an honor and experience I will not soon forget. Mrs. Mookda and I met first, sitting on mats beneath a tree, shoes off, sipping water and eating fresh fruit. From there we walked around the camp talking with the children and looking at the camp’s rice paddies, which are cared for totally by the children, the fish ponds and the buildings where classes are held, the computer center and radio station. It is from the children’s radio station that 8,000 households get news and local information.
The pampered traveler might find day-to-day living at Baan Kru Mookda a challenge. In fact, I’m not sure the pampered traveler would even find Baan Kru Mookda or even Phayao for that matter. GeoVisions volunteers, however, find it relaxing. There is no English television or great shopping destinations in the near vicinity. GeoVisions volunteers pamper themselves with lots of reading material, a deck of cards, travel-size board games and a sense of exploration. The surrounding area is breathtaking. One also gets a very real appreciation of the Thai culture since Phayao is not a tourist destination.
The camp (also referred to as an orphanage) does not have many of the conveniences that we are accustomed to. For instance, there are only cold showers, squat toilets, and mosquito netting over all of the beds. The food is 100% Thai. Thai food revolves around rice. Many Thai’s will start a conversation with, “gin khao yung,” which means, “have you eaten yet?” Around rice you will find pork, fish or chicken and the addition of hot spices, coconut milk, vegetables, Thai curry, and lemon grass. The living conditions are absolutely fine…they are just different than what many people are used to and they take some adjustment time.
The boys are all around 12 years old (the oldest being 15), while the girls have a slightly higher average age of 13 to 14. The girls live in a single, long dormitory with adjoining squatter toilets and showers. Female volunteers live in the dorm building with the girls. The boys live in groups in huts that border the rice paddies and fishponds. The area also contains an empty dormitory for visitors, a building with a radio station and ten computers (all donated by Microsoft), a meeting hall, a recreation center with basketball hoops, an outside kitchen and dining room for the children, various fruit trees, a long canopied table area for dinner guests or studying at night, and a beautiful sala for relaxing in at night.
In 1989, Kru Mookda established this project to provide accommodation, education, and a better quality of life for local children and children from nearby mountain tribes whose families are unable to support them. For over a decade, Kru Mookda has been taking in children who have been abused, are extremely impoverished, or face other hardships. Initially the objective of the project was to educate and provide opportunities specifically to young women in the area. Thailand’s notorious sex trade is fueled primarily by young, poor girls who come from the countryside because of parental pressures to help the family earn enough money to survive or, if uneducated, to survive themselves. Kru Mookda has devoted her life to doing research in sociology and community development, as well as teaching throughout Thailand.
The project, which includes volunteers from GeoVisions, strives to make the children live as independently as possible. Thus, they are responsible for farming rice, picking fruit, fishing, buying meat or noodles, cooking their own food, cleaning the camp, washing their clothes, walking to school, and setting up their own living rules. Every night before bed, the children meet in the gathering hall to pray and discuss any new issues or problems. It is a sort of miniature government with a set of representatives (usually the more elder children) who meet with Kru Mookda. The children all adhere to the rules and carry out their responsibilities. Every morning they will wake up at 5:30 to begin preparing breakfast or doing chores, walk or ride to school at around seven, come home at around four, begin cooking dinner and do chores, maybe play some soccer or games, and finish the night with homework and a gathering in the meeting hall.
There is a saying in Thai that if it isn’t Sanook (fun or from the heart), it isn’t worth doing. When we opened the program to GeoVisions’ volunteers, I thought about naming the program “Sanook in the North.” OK, that isn’t true. But what is very true is how much the children enjoy the volunteers and how touching it is to listen to them describe how much they miss them once they are gone. I left Baan Kru Mookda ready to tell the story and committed to sending as many GeoVisions volunteers as I can to the orphanage. Kru Mookda has made a difference in lives for many years, and through her vision, GeoVisions’ volunteers have an opportunity to impact young lives and an entire rural community forever.
For more information about Baan Kru Mookda and the region, I have provided Internet links, below.
Best wishes on your quest for Sanook,
Randy LeGrant
Executive Director
GeoVisions
You can also click here to watch a video about Baan Kru Mookda. You will need QiuckTime to view the video.