I introduced the first Project Trust volunteers to Phana five years ago and currently the 5th pair of volunteers have about 7 weeks longer before they return to their homes in Scotland. My son-in-law had been a PT volunteer in Chiengmai and I had done some school visits in Thailand on behalf of PT.
What is Project Trust? It is an organisation with charitable status based on the island of Coll, Scotland, which sends volunteers to more than 20 countries around the world. The volunteers are recent school-leavers taking a gap year before going on to university. They undergo a rigorous selection process on Coll, which is a remote island in the Inner Hebrides. If selected, they then return to Coll for a training week being sent off to their projects in late August. They usually spend 50 weeks in their host country. This is quite an achievement for young people who have not previously had to fend so much for themselves, or make a long-term commitment to working! There are now 8 of them in Isan, 2 in Phana, Amnat Charoen Province, 2 in Yasothon Province and 4 in Ubon Ratchathani Province, but as in many other things, Phana was first!
Phana was also first in that all previous volunteers in Thailand had been based in a secondary school but in Phana it is the Municipality (Tetsaban) which sponsors them. For the last two years the Phana Municipality has been responsible for running Samarkee School one of the two primary schools in their area. Samarkee School has now been extended to include two years of secondary schooling (matayum) and this will be further extended with each new intake. Phana Suksa is the long-established secondary school and is located just outside the Phana Municipality boundary. The volunteers teach one day a week at Phana Suksa and two days each at Samarkee School and Udomwitayakorn School, the Ministry of Education-run primary school.
The arrival of the first two volunteers was an exciting event in Phana, and each new pair since then has been welcomed quite elaborately with a baci ceremony, dancing, welcoming speeches, a feast, and so on. In the first photo you can see the mayor (in yellow shirt) and the Headteacher of Samarkee School in dark blue shirt behind the sukwan trays:
These dancing girls are from Phana Suksa school:
The volunteers spend the first two weeks with a host family, learning something about theThai lifestyle, manners, food and that sort of thing. After those first weeks they move into a small house provided and furnished by the municipality. Dressing up is also something their hosts like them to do. Here are two volunteers meeting their host family for the first time:
Meeting Phana's notables is another important part of their introduction to Thailand. Here are two volunteers being introduced to the chief of police and his deputy by my wife Pensri:
This pair are with the deputy mayor and his wife outside the municipal offices. The Deputy Mayor oversees the volunteer programme and while the first two volunteers were in Phana he visited the UK and Coll with me and my wife.
What they are in Phana for, of course, is teaching, mostly in the two primary schools. Here is one of their primary school classes and some small groups of students:
Getting to know some of the students outside school is also important, and good fun:
The volunteers spend 3 weeks in Chiengmai taking a course in Thai language ... and enjoying themselves with the other volunteers from all over Thailand. They last saw them on the training course on Coll. After that, the second semester of the Thai school year starts, and then comes Christmas, which seems to be an increasingly popular excuse for a bit of celebration. In the first picture our two girl volunteers were joined by a volunteer in Chiangrai who came to Phana for Christmas.
Being able (and/or willing) to put on a bit of a song and dance always goes down well in Phana:
These two (above) were part of a performance that starred the Phana Suksa bong lang orchestra (below):
Occasionally, other young farangs visit Phana. These two girls were AFS students living and going to school in Amnat Charoen. The girl on the left is from Belgium, the girl in the middle is from Italy and on the right is the head of English at Phana Suksa. The girls spent a few days in Phana, staying at our house.
The Tetsaban provide the volunteers with bicycles, but NOT with cycle training!
The Tetsaban even have spare bikes for visiting friends who are shown around Phana:
There are a lot of opportunities for dressing up. These two (our current volunteers) are with an English teacher from Samarkee School:
These two joined other young women of Phana to dance for the King's 80th birthday:
From mid-March to mid-May our volunteers spend travelling in Thailand or in neighbouring countries. But every year they have come back to Phana for Songkran. The next sequence of photos of the first two girls who came to Phana show why:
The Songkran procession makes its way to Don Chao Poo, where the 'Queens' join other VIPs:
... and receive the traditional blessings:
When August (earlier in the case of our first pair of volunteers) comes around it is time for Phana and their two volunteers to say goodbye to each other, and they do so with some formality and a lot of sincerity:
But some of them come back again, several have had parents visit Phana, and ALL of them have been pleased to welcome friends to stay in Phana. And Phana ... always knew it was the centre of the universe!
If you would like to know more about PROJECT TRUST, you can visit their website at:
or click on the link on my blog's sidebar.
Lawrence what an interesting post. It adds a different perspective to what I was writing about on the same day.
The photographs add some nice touches too. I look forward to hearing more in the future.
BTW your comment did show up on MTF!
Posted by: Mike | 29 June 2009 at 05:28 PM