Middle & Long Term Projects (MLTV)

DaLaa Program 2017 Middle & Long Term Projects (MLTV)

Middle & Long Term Projects (MLTV) Code Name of Project Place, Province Dates Type Vol. Kok Payom, Satun All year Community Living, 5 Fishermen’s Village possible Creative English Teaching 0950MLTV (Kok Payom and Environment Community) 1301MLTV Kok Riang- Klong Hoy Khong, All year Non-chemical Agriculture 5 Lung Jaeng’s Garden Songkhla possible Southern Thailand

1401MLTV Ta Yang Ta Yang, Satun All year Creative Education and 5-6 Learning Home Southern Thailand possible Community Living

1402MLTV Koh Sukorn Sukorn Island Between Rice growing and 4 Trang province August 1st, Activities with Kids Southern Thailand 2017 - March 31st, 2018 1601MLTV Withee Tai Cha-uat, Nakorn Sri All year Alternative Education and 5 Community Tammarat Province possible Community Living Southern Thailand

MTV (2-6 months) 1701MTV Tamek Tamek, Between Activities with children, 4-5 Trang province March 1st Agriculture and Southern Thailand and May Community Living 30th 2017 1702MTV Koh Nangkham Koh Nangkham, Between Creative English teaching 2-3 Pattalung province, April 1st and and activities with kids Southern Thailand mid- October,2017 DESCRIPTION of Middle & Long Term Projects:

0950MLT Fishermen’s Village (Kok Payom V Community)

Project Background KokPayom is the name of a small Muslim fishermen’s village where only 600 people living in. The village is located 10 kilometers away from its district called LaNgu and close to the seawater canal surrounded by mangrove forests. It’s no doubt that every single family regards the fishery industry as a main, permanent career. All the villagers are linked constantly with close relationship between community and related families, and they greatly welcome visitors, activists and volunteers to bring up voluntary projects to their village and join in any useful activity. Volunteers will be able to learn how the villagers lead their lives; it’s an experience you cannot find in the rushes of city life. Lead a life as easy-going as a countryman! The village really wants to conserve their traditional way of living even if there are a lot of pressure and conditions coming from the city. The villagers want to be actors to preserve their lifestyle, the nature for the next KokPayom generation. The community wants to be responsible. So, it's now a real importance for this village to be a challenger of the future of their community and our Earth. They really want to make good choices for the coming children!! The community has recognized their problems and is working hard to find solutions to the environmental and social issues.

About the project Since 2009, DaLaa volunteers have been working with the villagers and children especially at the local schools. There have been a big improvement and continuation of useful activities and construction. Community members started to be aware of environmental problems and how to preserve the local beliefs and life style, as well as letting young generation learn about all those local values and wanting to remain this precious natural resources and life style. In 2011, there was an initiative of starting “KlongTohLem Academy”, an alternative school on the other side of the canal, in the middle of mangrove forest where children can learn about environment, local values, wisdoms, and language in a very natural method of learning every Sunday. There are approximately 20 children, aged between 7- 12 attending. So far, the main school building and other necessary structures have been constructed from collaboration of both villagers and international volunteers. However, there is still work that need to be done. Volunteers can possibly do the activities as follows;

 Create non-formal classes at local schools  Create a place where local people and children can learn and become more aware of the importance of our environment (Alternative School - KlongTohLem Academy)  Organize nature trips with children (awareness of the importance of nature)  Plant young seedlings in the mangrove forests (occasionally)  Organize fun and enjoyable activities to the village children at the village meeting place

Students’ English ability Their English knowledge is very basic or perhaps you might say that it is lower than that level. It is because of a lack of accurate pronunciation or proper accent. Most students basically know only easy words, short sentences and the letters in the alphabet. With our teaching project we don’t want to teach English like most of the teachers. First we want the children to enjoy the class, show them it can be fun to learn English. That's why we want to make a combination between learning and creativity. How? That will depend on you and the responsible people. In this case you can share your ideas together with the English teachers to enhance the students’ language skill. Let's share our ideas and make a nice program together.

During the project period, international volunteers will have the opportunity to experience Thai culture though it’s Muslim village, language and local lifestyle with the villagers. Villagers of KokPayom are Muslim so there is no pork or alcohol in the village. Women should dress modestly although you will discover when you live there that the villagers are very relaxed.

Aims of project  to help support activities of the KokPayom local community  to take care of KlongTohLem Academy  to build friendship between volunteers and local people  to be part of the local community of KokPayom village

Accommodation: a triple hut, bungalow-like, dormitory style with other volunteers Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Kok Payom village, La Ngu, Satun province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/?page_id=218

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1301MLT Kok Riang-Lung Jaeng’s V Garden

Project Background Mr. Suthep Suwankrajang, host and project coordinator, known as Lung Jaeng, has an interest to produce his own organic food. He himself does not have any agricultural background, however, he took the initiative to turn his land property into a place where everyone can learn and experiment on non-chemical agriculture. We could say it’s a social garden. Since August 2015, his home is also a volunteer service learning center where we built our new DaLaa association office. Lung Jaeng has a strong social network and he is involved in voluntary work, social activism and forest conservation for many years. He has been laboriously growing variety of vegetables, rice and local seasonal fruits. He tries to create a learning space for the surrounding community members, especially for the new generation, to grow healthy food and to exchange good ideas. According to Lung Jaeng’s observation, our societies nowadays are so used to the convenient way of living and buying everything from the market without realizing that most of the food products sold in market heavily contained dangerous chemicals and pesticides, which would eventually lead to severe health problems.

4 years ago, Lung Jaeng started all by himself, growing vegetables and fruit trees such as pineapples, coconuts, mangoes, papayas, aubergines, Chinese lettuce, etc.. Apart from him, there are also other few friends in the same village, Lung Sian, and Lung Chiaw, who have been supporting and coordinating with his initiatives. They always come by for a visit and give Lung Jaeng advice on how to grow vegetables.

DaLaa saw this as a meaningful project for us and volunteers to be involved in, as well as taking the opportunity to learn about this highly sustainable self-reliant living. Moreover, it’s very important to give them all the help and support that they need in bringing about awareness, and in the meantime build-up collaborations and train apprentices within their own and neighboring communities.

By sending volunteers to work with Lung Jang, DaLaa hopes that we can support him with manpower, energy and skills from the volunteers, and also help him to promote the idea of non-chemical agriculture among the villagers and to support a strong social network.

Daily life and works in the project Usually, you will work in the vegetable garden (about 3 km from the house). Work will involve nurturing vegetables plants and fruit trees, collecting vegetables for your own consumption, feeding animals, growing seeds or nursing young plants. The volunteers should be able to handle physical hard work but there is no pressure and you will have a lot of time to relax. For this part, volunteers should be ready to handle long periods of time in the garden, isolated, giving attention to plants and the work needed to be done. It could be sometimes quite boring (taking off weeds, watering…). Another part of the project is to join social activities in the village (at the temple for example) and at home, the voluntary service center. There will have many visitors including students groups, DaLaa members and local people. You may organize activities with local kids too. You will follow your host, Lung Jaeng in his daily life and support him. Taking care of the center, cleaning, cooking activities is very important too. You will have opportunities to meet and work with DaLaa association staff. Kok Riang is a village which is close to Hatyai city. Do not expect the village’s life of close and relax relationships that you can find in the countryside villages because most of people are working in the city, worries and money have already taken over here. But the relationships with people joining our project can be really warm though.

Aims of project  To support the efforts for this place to be an agricultural learning space for interested people  To learn from each other among volunteers themselves, and from volunteers to villagers vice versa through “learning by doing” concept  To build good relationship between volunteers and local people  To be a part of the Voluntary Service Center

Accommodation: shared bamboo huts in the project host’s compound Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Baan Kok Riang, Klong Hoy Khong district, Songkhla province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/?page_id=1149

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1401MLT TA YANG LEARNING V HOME

VILLAGE BACKGROUND Baan Ta Yang is a Muslim village located a few kilometers away from the coastline of Andaman Sea in Satun province, Southern Thailand. It is geologically an island in which it is connected by the 2 bridges leading to La Ngu town, district of Satun province. Villagers’ occupation is mainly individual labor making a living on their rich natural resources that is river palm tree of which its particular leaf, “Bai Jaak” (Thai name), is well-known for making roofs, handicraft like baskets and tobacco roll. Its landscape and quality of soil in general are really suitably appropriate to this kind of tree, and the products processed are of good quality. The other main occupation of the villagers is fishery industries as the village is surrounded by river leading to the Andaman Sea.

PROJECT HOST’S BACKGROUND Bang Leem is one of Baan Ta Yang villagers and he is the initiator of this project. He believes that the village and children’s homes should be a principal place to learn about life. However, nowadays, the community is facing difficulties to manage this role as some parents start to think that to acquire better education for their children is to send them away to schools in town including private ones that intuition fees are so costly.

MAIN THEME OF THE PROJECT Creative Education: the first idea of Bang Leem is to give opportunities to local kids to learn English. He sees it an important tool for their future. Percentage of local kids’ language abilities is very low. They only know very basic words, few conversations like “How are you? “I am fine” “Thank you and you?” even if their verbal pronunciation is not really right. It reflects hard situations why quality of kids’ education in rural areas is still undeveloped. Bang Leem is now taking this project very seriously and wish that international volunteers can help support him. Therefore, he offers his place for which various activities to enhance learning process of the village kids to be organized by international volunteers, with support of the parents. That’s where the source of this “Learning Home” came from.

Community Living: this would literally go along with this proverb “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. By embedding yourself as a long-term volunteer being part of the village life, to solve your curiosity about our Thai culture though its Muslim community, we hope by living in the community of Baan Ta Yang, you will get deeply into our traditions that we live, learn and work together!

Around his area, there’s a compact land that volunteers can grow their own vegetables. Non-chemical, self- sustainable agriculture is one of the aims the host and villagers are taking into consideration. And it also is our aim to spread this action “food autonomy”.

OBJECTIVES  Supporting ideas of the project host with benefits towards better education of the village kids  Locals become able to communicate in English  Preserving the local traditions and wisdom  Long-lasting learning exchange between villagers, their children and international volunteers  Acknowledging importance of sustainable agriculture  Understanding the importance of the village community life

GENERAL SCHEDULE (Adjustable)

Monday-Thursday Giving non-formal English classes at Baan Ta Yang School/ Ta Payom school, evening classes at the project host’s place, and/or at the village mosque.

Working stints as estimatedwill be 3-4 hours per day. Kids’ ages ranged from 3-15 years old.

Exact schedule will be given when you arrive at the project. We avoid saying it now for when it’s due to come, it might already change the plan.

Friday morning Weekly meeting for volunteers Friday afternoon and a Days-off whole Saturday Sunday Optionally, volunteers can organize or come up with some activities with villagers and kids

From mid-March till mid-May and October’s time,there will be school holidays, which mean we can make more activities with local kids. In the second part of the year (after June), you may expect staying through rainy season. The project will be run though it’s a lot of rain. Volunteers should be aware they will have a lot of time “indoors”, here we’ll rather say “under roofs” 

Accommodation: huts shared with other volunteers Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Baan Ta Yang village, La Ngu, Satun province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/?page_id=1498

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1402MLT Koh V Sukorn VILLAGE BACKGROUND Sukorn Island (Koh Sukorn) is a small island situated in Palian district, Trang province, Southern Thailand. For this project, we will be conducting activities with communities in Baan Laem and Baan Toong village (2 on the 4 villages of the island). In these 2 villages, there is population of 1,189 or 337 families, 95% of them are Muslims. On this island there are also official offices and institutions of which are government-run namely one pre-school, two primary schools (grade 1 to grade 6), one healthcare center and one police station. General income of villagers is from fishing industry regarded as main occupation, secondly is rubber plantation and agriculture; growing rice, watermelons, corns and other seasonal vegetables as well as keeping livestock. Koh Sukorn watermelon is widely well-known for its best product because of its sweet juicy taste. The island landscape is geologically plain, partly with small hills. Also, around the shore line, it is lined up with scattered mangrove trees.

In general the villagers are very generous and they still remain the culture of supporting and sharing with each other. Furthermore, they also believe that paddy and agriculture is the main food stability of the village.

PROJECT BACKGROUND Already some years, a group of local researchers have been working with the 2 communities mentioned above. In one community, the village members are still remaining their traditional way of living, while in another, people started to drop their old values and turning to development from the cities. Less and less people are working on paddy fields, or growing their own food supply as it is easier to buy. Therefore, these researchers aim to bring awareness to the locals to keep their old life style and revive the tradition of growing paddy, other traditional agriculture, as well as developing local rice species, and forming farmer’s co-op group. They invite us to organize volunteers’ activities there in 2013. Few years after, the researcher group is not very active anymore but we have successfully continued activities (mainly agriculture and activities with kids) with villagers and develop good relationships through short term workcamps and middle term volunteers. The period is now (since 2016) fixed from August to March as the raining season from April to July has less possible activities for volunteers. It is also important the host family have some time for themselves.

THE PROJECT Volunteers will be staying together with a host family and share the daily life with them. Depending on the interests of each volunteer, they can join more education activities (English teaching or others) or agriculture activities. Their place in the daily life of the host family is essential. They shouldn’t be a burden but a support which can easily be spread to the community around. For 2016, all the middle term volunteers were staying at Ja Tak and Bang Meng family and their experience has been really great. Ja Tak would take time every day to explain them what they can help or do. Both hosts are going every morning from dawn to beginning afternoon for fishing but they still have enough energy to do more activities with volunteers after this. There is another family, Ja Yao who is also ready to welcome volunteers.

OBJECTIVES  Supporting ideas of the villagers with benefits towards better education of the village kids  Preserving the local agriculture traditions and wisdom  Long-lasting learning exchange between villagers, their children and international volunteers  Acknowledging importance of sustainable agriculture  Understanding the importance of the village community life

YEARLY SCHEDULED ACTIVITIES OF RICE GROWING TRADITION OF THE ISLAND

August and September September is the starting month of rice planting season. Traditionally, villagers will prepare their best-selected paddy. The secondstep is to sow the fertilized paddy into nursery fields. Thirdly, plough the soil for transplanting the rice. October  Transplant the seedlings from the nursery into the well-prepared rice fields  Plant watermelon seeds on the rice field ridges  Take care of the rice field

November  Pick up ready-to-eat watermelons  Take care of the rice field

December Rice harvesting!

**Every year at the end of December, a specialL annual event will be organized at the island. People know it as “Bergfah Andaman Festival”. This festival is held widely in famous places located in the Andaman Sea. The aim is to promote products made by locals. There will be booths set up in which villagers sell food and sweets, and friendship activities like boat racing, football matches against village teams as well as performances on stage will be also held.

January –  Sun-dry paddy for next planting March  Plant watermelon after the harvesting season  Make compost from rice straw

Other activities, beside the rice growing, in the meantime, volunteers will have a chance to provide non- formal and creative education by using English as a tool in one primary school called Baan Lam. The children’s ages range from 5-12 years old. Number of them is around 40. Class learning stint is estimated to 2-3 hours a day, 3-5 days a week. Volunteers can also manage their own class on Saturdays and Sundays or in the evening at your accommodation when kids are free from school.

Agriculture, a space for agriculturally self-sustainable experiment will be created where volunteers can grow their own simple, non-chemical vegetables. Types of vegetable can be seasonal ones, easily grown and adaptable to tropical weather of the island.

Learning the fishing tradition, involving into the village lifestyle, this is probably one of the best ways to be there not just as a volunteer but a fisherman.It is just simply going along with the locals when they go fishing out to sea or at shore.

**Remark** During March-April and October, it’s school holiday in Thailand, which means we can make more activities with local kids. Raining season is from August to October.

Accommodation: host family Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Sukorn Island, Trang province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/?page_id=1306

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1601MLTV Withee Tai Community

PROJECT A group of a few families with liberal dreams decided to start alternative education for their children and the interested members of their villages. They would like to welcome volunteers to help them to organize education activities and will include them as a part of their family and life style toward harmonious relationship between people and their environment. They try to free themselves from any kind of slavery from the mind to the body and the entire society. They want to become a new kind of community based on a liberal way of life through spiritual work and active daily life.

All the members of this community, living in a few neighborhood villages are active in the social life of their area and want to take full responsibility of their way of life. They first met at the Southern center for Buddhist alternative medicine (MorKeaw) and decided to join together for deeper reflections on how to improve this society. They have good knowledge about alternative education (already practicing home schooling), traditional health, agriculture, herbs… They want to take concrete actions with meaningful results.

The important domains we try to be free from in Withee Tai are: education, economy, society, health. It should be starting by ourselves, then the family, the community (natural or chosen), the country, the world. We want to change the world by acting locally, not only dream. Everyone is responsible.

So how can we bring the volunteers to the right direction so she/he can start the improvement for him/herself? We need to learn together and for this we need each one to open ourselves, break the ice between people, realize our common desire to preserve the world and rely on our volunteer spirit. We should have enough attention to learn from observing ourselves at any time. We shouldn’t try to change others (only if asked for help). At Withee Tai, volunteers practice this through healthy activities for mind and soul: morning walk, yoga, discussion in evening and prayer before meals. We usually eat 2 meals a day.

AIMS of PROJECT  Improve the quality of human way of life  Start a new kind of community exempt of slavery, on the base of family and with a healthy environment.

Participants would feel attached with:  freedom in following their dreams  good relationships between people  unity and solidarity as well as preserving diversity

MAIN ACTIVITIES  Join and organize activities for Withee Tai learning center (see below)

 Daily tasks including collecting food, cooking, cleaning...

 Join daily activities with villagers for the benefits of the community (agriculture, restore a good ecological system, develop the center, learn local culture)

 Assist to organize health and family camp together with the Southern center for Buddhist alternative medicine (MorKeaw)and practice with a simple and healthy way of life.

For more information on principles of the Buddhist Alternative Medecine of Mor Keaw, please check this web page: http://morkeawninepills.blogspot.com/2013/10/balancing-of-hot-and-clod-elements-in.html

 Dialogue with the community members about learning process and plan for activities once a month

 Plans, activities and evaluation every day: Thinking together, Acting together. Learning together about mind and souls, practical activities About 8 families will be the core of this community based in 5 villages. The main center is the house of Crue Liam where a clay house has been built to welcome volunteers. It will be their main accommodation. Volunteers will follow the rhythm of life of these families.

WITHEE TAI COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER Since November 2016, Withee Tai has been officially registered as a community based learning center. There are about 25 of these centers in Thailand. They are free to organize their way of education and recognized at the same time. There are now 9 children registered aged 6 to 16 (Dec 2016), and more may be interested, but everyone around is also part of the learning process. We give equal importance to everyone; there are no actual teachers but 3 equal groups for decisions and preparing adapted program to each child: children, parents and facilitators (mentors). The aim of the learning center is to improve the life quality, improve: 1- our soul 2- our environment 3- our professional skills (find our way) Being free means for us being happy to live together. Children will learn from joining and practice concrete activities some will be for everyone like yearly meeting, art camp, thanks rice and water festival, health and family camp, or walking trips. Other will be optional depending of the child interest. It includes yoga, healthy cooking, gardening and rice planting, languages learning in everyday life with volunteers, healthy community market (that they join every Friday afternoon in the small town), local cultural event, international family camp, making natural dam, clay house building, social enterprise (business) project, local cultural events… and any new possible activity proposed by kids or volunteers around can be included.

The only real obligation for kids to join this learning center; and it could be interesting for volunteer to do so; is to take time everyday (at least regularly) to think about these 3 questions: What did I do (today)? What did I learn? How did I feel? and to find a way to record it, drawing, writing,… This is for a double reason, first to be able to learn effectively about ourselves and secondly to be able to explain and show to people outside our learning process. Indeed, not sending our kids to a regular school is usually not well understood by people around. There is also a possibility for each kid to be back to a regular school and the learning center offers the equivalence with a proper system of step to reach.

The seven agreements of Withee Tai community: 1- Find our common ground within our differences. 2- Learn from others by observing inside ourselves. 3- Say what you do and do what you say. 4- Everything is based on the relationship of brotherhood. 5- Develop heart of ownership. 6- Positive thinking. (Get free from judging others). 7- Do not take side part from one or another when a conflict occurs.

Accommodation: host family Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Cha-uat district, Nakorn Sri Tammarat province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/?page_id=2158

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1701MTV Tamek Tamek, Between Activities with children, 4-5 Trang province March 1st Agriculture and Southern Thailand and May Community Living 30th 2017

The project Tamek (ตะเหมก) is a mountainous Buddhist village of about 500 homes with beautiful steep-like landscape and clear water streams beneath a canopy of tall trees.Villagers’ houses can be seen a bit distantly from each other alongside the streams.The main occupation of villagers is farming (rubber plantation, fruits and vegetables). The community is part of Lamor sub-district of Nayong district in Trang province, Southern Thailand, around 12 kilometers away from the main road.

It’s an old village founded for more than 200 years in Bantad Mountain range (เททือกเขาบรรททัด). However, the government declared the land as a national park for about 30 years, like many other places in Thailand. Villagers of Tamek have continuously fought to officially acquire a land deed for the right to make a living on their generation-to-generation properties. On a side, they cut forest illegally, to plant rubber plantation for earning money but on the other side and recently, they have beenquite active to preserve their forested watershed. They realized the danger of not having what they thought could never disappear: the forest, water and wild animals. More important than a national park: living in harmony in the nature. They started a preservation forest learning center which has also for aim to gather locals and outsiders interested in their project. They know us (DaLaa)through another of our project in 2014 and we started to organize few international workcamps with them since 2015. Some were more about agriculture, some about water preservation (making small dams for water use) and some more about education for local kids.

For these 3 months (March to May 2017), we will try (on the request of the villagers) for the first time to send middle term volunteers to join Tamek community. It will be summer vacation from mid-March to mid-May. Volunteers will be joining locals to organize activities for kids(around 20 to 30 kids from 6 to 12 years old)and other activities like gardening and forest preservation. International volunteer can give a big motivation for the locals to continue their aims and for local kids to learn about the outside world. We will need your creativity and ideas of games and activities that will create a multi-cultural atmosphere for them. On 13-14 April, there will be the Thai New Year and you will join this cultural event with the villagers.

Aims  To support the community  To be wisely aware of using natural resources  To give ideas or knowledge from home to inspire youths in preserving their nature  To learn to be part of the community  To let children be familiar with volunteers and learn in international/multi-cultural atmosphere  Kids at least can interact with volunteers in English

Accommodation: Community hut Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Tamek, Trang province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/projects/long-term/tamek

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1702MTV Koh Nangkham Koh Nangkham, Between Creative English teaching 2-3 Pattalung province, April 1st and and activities with kids Southern Thailand mid- October,2017

Project presentation

Baan Koh Nangkham Nua is a small village situated in Pattalung province and close to the middle part of Songkhla Lake which is Thailand’s biggest lake. The community area is a small island inside the lake so the main career of the villagers is fisheries. Some work on rubber and palm plantation, fruit orchards or shrimp farm. During free time, some villagers gain some extra income from making and selling local desserts and fruit preservation, for instance. You may find more information about Songkhla lake on this following website; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songkhla_Lake. The villagers of Koh Nangkham are Muslim . The local government primary school has been open since 1956. It offers classes from kindergarten to grade 6. At the moment, there are 146 students, and 12 teachers. Mr. Somhit Chobngam (Crue Chem), the school principal contacted DaLaa first in 2015 to discuss on the possibility of volunteers as he saw the importance of improving learning methods for the students. He hopes that children can learn about language and cultures naturally by doing activities with the volunteers. We already organized 2 Short Term workcamps (2 weeks each in 2015 and 2016). There is one more planned in February 2017 and we decided to increase the support for the kids education by sending Middle term volunteers for the first term of the next school year, starting in May for Thai kids. The next holidays will be in October. Crue Chem would like to start the project in April if any volunteers is interested to get to know the community before the school open. This will be a first try of longer term cooperation with Cru Chem and the local community.

The main aim for volunteers is to be part of the learning process for students and villagers. Volunteers will be arranging creative activities with students. In return, the volunteers can also learn about local fisherman lifestyle of Songkhla Lake.

In small communities in Thailand, local people hardly have contacts with foreigners, while students are getting pressured from current educational system to study English but they never have a chance to meet any foreigners. Therefore, this will give them the chance to gain motivation to learn and explore the cultural diversity by doing creative activities with international volunteers.

Having international volunteers to learn about local fisherman’s lifestyle, it will help the fishermen to feel more motivated to preserve their local knowledge and wisdom. Apart from that, volunteers can also become the link between children and villagers to take part in this community learning activities.

AIMS OF PROJECT  Children and adults can learn English with volunteers  2-way learning process between local children/ villagers and volunteers  Better understanding towards local culture  To build a good relationship between volunteers and local people  To be part of Koh Nangkham community

Accommodation: at teacher’s house or at school Fee: minimum of 2-month stay (See below fee for middle and long-term projects) Location: Koh Nang Kham, Pattalung province, Southern Thailand Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport Project page: http://www.dalaa-thailand.com/wordpress/projects/long-term/kohnangkham

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Fee for Middle & Long Term Projects the minimum stay required is 2-month service, 17,000 Baht, approx. 430 Euro The fee will be used for living expenses (gas, water, electricity, food) and materials used in projects/activities. Some part of the fee will be used to support Thai volunteers and our organization.

For volunteers intending to stay longer than 3 months, from month 3 onward, the fee per month is 7,000 Baht.

For example, 3-month participation, the fee will be 24,000 Baht (17,000+7,000), approx. 610 Euro **Volunteers should bring their fee payment in cash to our office the first day they arrive. We prefer the Thai currency Not Euro so please exchange it before. In case saving it on international credit card, you should make sure with your bank if your card really works with any Thai ATM machine. Some of our long-term volunteers had difficulty with this resulting in a long awaiting time to receive a new one sent from their home country.

Basic conditions of DaLaa MLTV Projects  Participant is responsible for their own travel costs and all personal expenses during free time  Participant is responsible for taking care of their own insurance.  Participant should respect and have willingness to understand other cultures and backgrounds.  Living conditions will be in Thai style (willingness to adapt and enjoy simple conditions of living).  Willingness to work and live together, build friendship with local people and other volunteers, let's try to make this world a nice place to live in!!  Participant should have the basic skills/knowledge toward the project they apply for.  Participant should ask for a visa “Non-Immigrant type”. DaLaa will provide an invitation letter and other officially registered papers.

If you want more information, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Take care, DaLaa Team