DaLaa Program 2017

Middle & Long Term Projects (MLTV)


Middle & Long Term Projects (MLTV)
Code / Name of Project / Place, Province / Dates / Type / Vol.
0950MLTV / Fishermen’s Village
(KokPayom Community) / KokPayom, Satun / All year possible / Community Living, Creative English Teaching and Environment / 5
1301MLTV / KokRiang-
Lung Jaeng’s Garden / Klong Hoy Khong,
Songkhla
Southern Thailand / All year possible / Non-chemical Agriculture / 5
1402MLTV / KohSukorn / Sukorn Island
Trang province
Southern Thailand / Between
August 1st, 2017 - March 31st, 2018 / Rice growing and Activities with Kids / 4
1601MLTV / Withee Tai Community / Cha-uat, Nakorn Sri Tammarat Province
Southern Thailand / All year possible / Alternative Education and Community Living / 5
MTV(2-6 months)
1701MTV / Tamek / Tamek,
Trang province
Southern Thailand / Between March 1st and May 30th 2017 / Activities with children,
Agriculture and Community Living / 4-5
1702MTV / Koh Nangkham / Koh Nangkham,
Pattalung province, Southern Thailand / Between April 1st and mid-October,2017 / Creative English teaching and activities with kids / 2-3

DESCRIPTION of Middle & Long Term Projects:

0950MLTV / Fishermen’s Village (KokPayom 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: KokPayom village, La Ngu, Satun province, Southern Thailand

Meeting point: Hat YaiAirport

Project page:

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1301MLTV / KokRiang-Lung Jaeng’s 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 KokRiang, Klong Hoy Khong district, Songkhla province, Southern Thailand

Meeting point: Hat Yai Airport

Project page:

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1402MLTV / KohSukorn

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 –
March /
  • Sun-dry paddy for next planting
  • 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 YaiAirport

Project page:

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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.