Written by Jaruwan Supolrai, Special to Service for Peace Thailand
In the middle of the day, sweating under the hot, scorching sun, a volunteer group of thirteen young Korean students from Seoul National University in Korea, had carried sand bags, bricks and buckets of mixed cement, and are now painting the beam to complete a school library for under-privileged students in a rural village of Ban Nong Yao School in Bueng Kan District, Nong Khai Province, Northeastern Thailand.
Not only have they have learned to give through an educational service project by providing a room to read, but the young volunteers themselves have learned to appreciate the values of the happiness of giving and volunteering through the ‘Dream Catcher Library Project’.
This school library project is a part of Global Peacemaker Camp, which is an initiative of Service for Peace Thailand. The peacemaker Camp lasted for two weeks. The group had already finished one library for a school village in the Mae Chaem district in Chiang Mai Northern Thailand before traveling down to the Northeast to build this one in Nong Khai.
This young volunteer group is a member of ‘Global Inter-Culturing & Volunteering Club (GIV)’ from Seoul National University. The club does many activities concerned with volunteer work and cultural exchange programs.
“It was my first time to go abroad for volunteering. I feel the sharing communion between Thai people and GIV club members, especially when children ran to me and kissed me while I was walking in the village. I feel that I’m in heaven,” said 20 year-old Lee Yu Bin, a Agriculture Economics & Rural Development major from Gwang-Ju.
Volunteers and students enjoy helping each other to build the school library by making a level floor and painting the beams. Apart from this, they also enjoy playing with each other while working hard under the hot sun. They can relax, having fun and making friends at the same time. And at the end of the day, the homestay program is ready for them.
To have cross-cultural understanding, it is very important for young peacemakers to live and learn together with people of different background and cultures. The idea is to let them learn from each other, respect others and build relationship among themselves through different organized activities.
“I feel that I have made a difference in the community. I think we all realize that although Koreans and Thais live in different lands and use different languages, our thoughts and our minds are not different. We are (now) tied (to one another) with strong affection,” sincerely revealed Lee Yu Bin.
Before this camp, Lee Yu Bin thought Thais and Koreans would have only little things in common and there would be many differences between them. “But when I saw Thai students like Super-Junior and Big-Bang [popular Korean boy bands] and we danced with some grandmothers delightfully who came to our farewell party; when they tied strings on my hands and prayed sincerely for my health and happiness, I now feel that we are one and we're tied with even stronger affection,” recalled Lee Yu Bin.
Another GIV Club member expressed her feelings that “I didn't expect the people here would welcome such foreigners that much. Maybe that's because I've been living in the big city since I was born, people around me don't usually open their mind to strangers. But villagers here made me realize that they receive people and things sincerely,” said 19-year-old Lee Yoon-ju, a linguistics major from Suwon.
At the end of the program, school teachers, villagers and students arranged a farewell party. There was a Thai blessing ceremony, a beautiful local performance, and the volunteers were invited to joyfully dance in the Isaan [Northeast] style with villagers.
Volunteers are expected to feel their personal change and growth through this program by giving change to others like building a community library and participating in a cultural exchange program with villagers and children.
“It was a true life-changing experience for me. It was a priceless lesson to communicate not just with Thai people but with people all over the world. This opportunity has broadened my perspective in many ways,” added a 21-year-old Kim Seong Hye, a Civil and Environmental Engineering student. “I could grow up mentally and feel the pleasant atmosphere of volunteer work. I became more open-hearted to other cultures and new people. I felt happy and special sweating under the scorching sun!”
“Through this program, I think I became a person who has passion. In the past, when encountering difficulties I tried to escape from the situation,” said, 19-year-old Cho Yeon Hee. “Now I enjoy challenge! I think I got courage from this program. Before I was a very shy girl, but when I talked to Thailand's kind people, I became a little more of an active person!”
O Min Seok, 23 year-old-nuclear engineering major who grew up in Seoul said that “I didn’t know the joy of volunteering before. But when I saw children laughing, and every volunteer enjoying working and playing with the children, it also made me happy. Now I have recognized that volunteering is one way to be happy.”
Many people may think that building peace is a big deal and beyond the ability of just oneself, but in fact everybody can build peace all the time. Peace building can be accomplished by working in different kinds of service work and social activities.
Each single volunteer from the project is in a position of ‘peacemaker’, willing to do social service with volunteer spirit and always ready to give and share with under-privileged people.
“We believe that bringing ‘peace’ is a way to help reduce daily social problems and make worse circumstances better. That is why we aim to encourage our volunteers to be involved in service work,” cheerfully explained Hathailak Atcharakham, 25 year-old, project coordinator from Service for Peace Thailand. “We deeply hope that ‘volunteer spirit’ will be sustainably cultivated in their minds and will continue to grow more and more,” ensured Hathailak.
After the program, a young peacemaker is supposed to feel the state of being a leader within himself or herself, and appreciate the value of being a volunteer by helping others. In addition, a young peacemaker should be aware that he or she is not just a citizen that belongs to an individual country, but is a world citizen, who is able to share the same mission with people across the globe to make peace for this world.
