FISH, FROGS AND NEW KIDS' DORM: VIP GUESTS IMPRESSED

-












Project Coordinator Aj. Thongin Nuntarat invited VIP guests from America and Australia to inspect progress. Their trip uphill from Chiang Mai to Wae Vak, in Maechaem, Northern Thailand, took over three hours. Roads were slow and slippery in the heavy May rain. At one point passengers piled into the pickup truck bed to provide extra weight to the wheels and added traction.



At the site, visitors found the sustainability demonstration project going very well. So far, with the guidance of the elders, volunteers and villagers have built and filled tanks for fish and frogs. along with with a new vegetable garden. This is boosting protein in the diet of children and families. The fish are still too small to harvest, but the first crop of frogs is a delicious memory. In consultation with the fisheries department at Maejo University, volunteers are exploring ways to increase frog reproduction and speed fish growth.


The visitors saw the tanks teeming with young tilapia.  They looked over the completed dormitory and annex addition for mountain children who stay at the school all week.  Deep in the forest, they inspected the little dam volunteers recently built in advance of the rainy season. It's an experiment to see if a permanent pond can be created for food fish.

Like most visitors to Maechaem, the guests were impressed with how much can be done when there's a little bit of money, some donated  materials, and a lot of love.
  
 If you'd like to visit Mae Vak yourself, or help out with money or donated materials, please contact Ajarn Thongin Nuntarat at kruvin1978@gmail.com


 



Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
  PROJECT WIN IS GRASSROOTS PARTNERSHIPS FOR THAILAND Project WIN is named after our founder, Ajarn Thongin Nuntarat, M.A. His Thai nickname "Vin" is pronounced "Win." We're an informal coalition of volunteers involved in a wide array of projects, usually at the request and invitation of local Thai and Hilltribe people.   Before Covid, Vin organized large projects that included installing fishponds, vegetable gardens, poultry operations, mushroom "hotels," according to village needs.  He led a big team of argicultural university students who worked alongside villagers for several days to set up the projects and provide training.  There was open a big party at the end, with the volunteers providing music and comedy performances directed at the kid. Now, the universities have cracked down and students are no longer available, so we've switched to projects on a different scale.  In 2022, the project sponsored various agricultural initiatives in villag...
Read more

THE MAGIC IN MUSHROOMS FOR KHUN SAB

-
Image
This is inside one of the mushroom barns at the big farm. The lady is harvesting. We drove to the factory to see the magic. There, expert cultivators stir a special sterilized compost, a different recipe for each type of mushroom. They carefully pour the mixture into strong plastic bags, then inoculate it with spores and seal the bag tightly.  All the bags are dated and you can order ones that will begin to produce when you want them to. If you'd like to know more about mushroom farming, here's a great short film on mushroom growing in Thailand. It shows how people could change from poaching to farming. Just click on the title:    Five Minute Film on Sustainable Mushroom Farming . This village is high in the mountains and very beautiful. At the factory we bought 400 bags for about 25 cents each. We loaded them into on old pickup truck, along with about six volunteers and drove a couple of hours to the mountain village.  It's a little hard to get to...
Read more

PROJECT WIN IN A TIME OF COVID

-
Image
  YEAR END SUMMARY: 2021 Page back through these blogsite posts to pre-Covid times. You'll find everything from flood relief to building cafeterias and school libraries to big months-long installations of Project Protein involving entire villages. Those Project Protein days brought dozens of student volunteers from Maejo Agricultural University in Chiang Mai.  Under the leadership of Ajarn Thongin, they'd team with hill tribe villagers to build and establish fish ponds, mushroom hotels, organic vegetable gardens, and poultry operations. They'd involve kids of all ages and their parents, and the local school with these objectives: Permanent improvement in diet, pride in new cross-generational skills, and increased profits from sales of farm products: self-sufficiency and a better life for their kids. As a small grassroots charity, they depended on contributions from a network of friends.  The Project also planned a two-day village celebration for Thai Children's Day, inc...
Read more