Project WIN: Grassroots Partnerships for Thailand

New Project at Khun Lao: Start with Frogs Project WIN leadership has been invited to help another village. The new sustainability project is familiar: establish a renewable source of dietary protein, and attend to educational needs identified by village elders. The priority for Khun Lao kids and their families is to supplement their diets, and frogs and chickens seem a great place to start. While a central chicken coop and cisterns for frogs and fish are in the plans, Project WIN leaders know that the key to acceptance by the villagers is going slow. Just to get started, they filled an old cistern and populated it with 600 baby frogs last week. Student volunteersfrom the Fisheries Department at Maejo University advised villagers on how to care for the frogs until they are eating size, and promised to check in again soon.  In the interim they will be trying to raise about 40,000 Thai baht  ($1200)  to pay for the new big chicken coop, the frog operation, and a good su...

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...

Now that the tanks by the school are full of frogs and fish, project volunteers wanted to try something new, deep in the nearby forest. There's a stream there that could support fish if it could hold water throught he dry season.   These workers, mostly from the fisheries department at Maejo University, think they can build a dam that will create a good size, year-round fish pond, surrounded by lush foliage.  If it works, the pond will supplement the villagers' diet, and also serve as a demonstration project for other villages to try on their own.  All the projects at Mae Vak are a collaboration of villagers, elders, volunteers, and project coordinators.  This project's cost was all free labor and materials costs were close to zero. Three streams converge at an ideal spot in the forest. The student volunteers filled bags and hauled logs to build the dam before the rainy season.    Villagers and students alike hope the big rains ...

Project Win  brings together village elders, university students and other volunteers, and people who could use some help helping themselves. Just as needed are the generous donors from Thailand and beyond who help with money and materials.  Volunteers arrive from Chiang Mai, about three hours away. This time 53 Maejo students came rumbling into Mae Vak in two big army trucks, ready to build an addition to the children's dormitory. Mae Vak has a good school and children come from distant mountain villages to attend. Many have to stay a week or more at a time and they need a place to sleep. Under the direction of village elders  Project Win has been working on dorms, building bunks and gathering blankets and mosquito netting.  This trip was to add a wing where the kids could store their belongings.   Even with over 50 volunteers, it was a big job to complete in two days and they worked well past sundown. Volunteers and villagers ...

Everywhere in the Kingdom, Kids' Day is big, but in mountain villages it's a major all day event.  Thanks to Project Win and generous donors, this year's Kid's Day was a smashing success. Among the givers were friends from Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and even Arizona and Minnesota. Ajarn Thongin took 53 student volunteers from Maejo Agricultural University three hours up a mountain in Chiang Mai Province. They'd spent the weeks before gathering donated gifts and prizes for children whose parents can't afford such things.  They'd planned a big day of outdoor games, shows and fun with booths and tables, like a little county fair. Then in rained. Hard. Almost all day.  The Maejo students quickly moved everything inside and modified the program. Races became dance competitions, they invented other games to replace volleyball and tag, and the kids had just as much fun, or more.   In all, 85 children from the village, ages 4 to 12, had a joyful ...

Chiang Rai is about as far north as you can get in Thailand. It's the gateway to the Golden Triangle, and home of the Mae Kok.  The Mae Kok River is beautiful and inviting most of the year, but when it floods as it did too often in 2014, it brings suffering to local villagers, especially the kids.  As part of a larger effort by local leaders, Project Win volunteers brought food and supplies to 84 families displaced by the river this year, and helped with cleanup.    Later they did more. They saw how traumatized some of the youngest children were, even after the waters went down. The volunteers, mostly college students, helped local leaders create a day of healing and fun for the kids. All day there were races and games and prizes and food. Sixty four elementary school children exhausted themselves running around and  yelling  and  laughing  for the first time since the big floods.        ---- Note:  Project W...

WIN volunteers lend hands and hearts to the projects, from backbreaking flood cleanup to engineering projects like piping water to a dry village.  They take time off too, sometimes to raise money for Project WIN. Every year, a Chiang Mai Temple hosts a huge festival honoring the cuisine and customs of Buddhists from the far south of Thailand.  This year volunteers, mostly Maejo University students, raised money there.   They did the customary thing: standing with banners and chatting up bypassers, talking about current and past projects and future dreams. They also decided to enter the greased pole climbing event. Teams of two slathered themselves with peanut oil and took on a 16 foot pole, also greased. If they reached the platform on the top, they'd collect 10,000 baht, about $300, and give it to Project WIN. One team came very close, but nobody won.  The best team did get to make a nice donation to WIN anyway -- the consolation prize.   Tr...