The Journey of Young Peacemakers

Volunteer work benefits not only these school communities,
but also the volunteers themselves

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.

Start a change, become a Peacemaker!
Learn more about Service for Peace Thailand at www.sfpthailand.org

Learn, Lead and Share to Make a Difference

Words and Photo by Netting

“I only understand that working on community development is all about giving betterments to the villages by building road, schools, toilets and providing other needed services, but after attending this program I’ve realised the real meaning of community development, that we have to study and understand the situation of the village first and then help improving the quality of lives of villagers to sustainability”, said Ouch Thol, 33-year-old, one of participants from Cambodian Volunteers for Society (CVS).

This one-week programme of ‘Lesson Learnt Sharing Workshop, Training and Field Study Trip’, organised by Cambodian Volunteers for Society (CVS) in collaboration with Thai Volunteer Service (TVS), Oxfam Australia and Youth Resource Development Project (YRDP), brought together 50 Cambodian young hearted-volunteers to share and learn their experiences on community development through volunteerism in order to strengthen up their skills on working social development.

CVS and YRDP have been playing an important role in supporting, training and providing volunteer opportunities for young people, especially graduates and university students to contribute and learn from the communities. “Our youth volunteers have been working in the communities for several months already, but they still lack of working skill and social work skil. So they need this learning and sharing forum among themselves”, explained Pen Somony, 27 year-old, programme coordinator from CVS.

After those young volunteers have presented and shared their lesson learnt experiences to their volunteer organisation and other volunteers, a two-day training on Community Organising (CO) process and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques have given to them before heading for the field study trip in the Mekong community villages of Kratie province, northeast of Cambodia.

CO process is a practical process of working in the community and it guides you from the very first step of staff introduction and orientation to the last step of monitoring and evaluation. Meanwhile, PRA techniques has come along as useful study tools for them to understand the community in different contexts, which consists of data gathering, social mapping, seasonal calendar and transect walk for instance.

Participants of field study trip are divided into 2 study groups. One goes to Ksach Lev village and the other goes to Koh Kchnare village. Both villages are located on the Mekong riverside of Sambo district, which is the neighboring area of the proposed location of the hydropower is. The people of these two Mekong communities mainly rely on the natural resources; fishery and forestry. Education and health are still in the poor situation due to the distant location of the village.

Through the day light, volunteers from each group worked on their assignments; the physical and history data of the village, the relationship in community, the cultivating production, culture, spiritual believes , and the community situation. And the end of the day, each group presented what they have learned from their assignment to the whole group.

Sopheak, one of the CVS young volunteers happily reviewed that she have learned how the social mapping is useful to her ‘community work’, from theory to practice, this study trip brings her to the real situation. ‘Since I’ve been in the community for already three months, I was there with few instruments for community development and I don’t know how to use it effectively like this,’ She is excited to apply those tools when she goes back to her host village next time.

Nearly the end of the study trip, all of young volunteers, children and villagers together and helped fix the road in the community by digging and carrying the soil and the small stones to repair the dirt road. All people in the village were happy for our voluntary project.

‘I hope all people in Cambodian communities have a real heart for their community, they don’t think about only themselves, they must think for today, tomorrow and for the future, in peaceful, beautiful environment.” Added Thol in the end of study journey.

As it is believed that the youth volunteers are potential social activists working in communities. “In the long-term goal, we hope that their capacity of working in social development and volunteer spirit will be more and more built up and they will collaborate among their volunteer networks and also encourage other Cambodian young people to work for community and civil society in Cambodia.”, added a 27-year-old Sambath Bun, a programme coordinator from YRDP.

Children, Family and Radio

Thai Youth Community Radio Program Helps Build up Their Warm Family

By Jaruwan Supolrai

In Thailand now, local radio programs are mushrooming in every corner of this Land of Smiles. Thai youth are getting involved in this sort of project and they produce many interesting programs. Family is an interesting issue that they are currently working on. Do you ever think that this activity can help build up a warm family in their community? If yes, how? This article has the answer for you!

Every Saturday afternoon, a youth group in a small community of Tha Sao in Sai Yok District, Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand, run a radio program about the warm family through their local community radio station. This activity is supported by the Human Mapping Project of the Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University in Nakorn Prathom.

“I am proud to be a part of this program to help bring happiness and warmth to the families in my community”, said 14-year-old Kru ‘Niko’ Ranad, one of budding little DJs who works on this warm family program. Each person in a team is given different jobs like search for news or information and interview people, but they work together as a final product.

“It is very great for me to hear the feedbacks from my friends, family and people in my community and it is a sign that they are being aware of a warm family issue and they want to have a warm family”, Niko added with smiles.

Most of the information that they talk on the radio program is basically about the ways to a warm family, which are concerned with food security, nutrition, sanitary or even suggestions about travel places that the family can go for a holiday or local wisdom knowledge that should be maintained.

Another Little DJ Lai “Lai” Wanthong, 17 years old who used to dream of becoming a DJ said that,” I was very excited and nervous when I first was on air and another exciting activity is to go out to interview the ‘model warm family’. Being a part in this radio program is very challenging for me, it taught me how to manage my time between school and my work and I feel that I am more responsible.“

“Our main objective of the project is to promote the happiness and strengthen the relationship of the family. By that objective, we believe the youth will be the best target group to link with the family. The children and youth will also be the future of the families and communities”, explained, 59-year-old Ajaan Suvannee Promchan, a project investigator who works at the Field Research Station of Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University in Ubon Ratchathani.

Before the little DJ team had a chance to work on their radio program, the research project team organized a training workshop for them to lead them the way to work as a DJ. The workshop provided them with how to write news, how to search for news, how to make a adverting spot and as well as how to write a radio feature story.

The result of this activity turned out quite great! The children enjoy working on their radio program and the parents also help them to search for news and interesting issues to talk through the radio program or even teachers and friends at school also are kind enough providing them with their useful information for their work.

And more importantly those people always encourage the little DJs to work hard and follow up with the program. This shows that the project can be a part of helping building up a warm family to people in their community.

It is good that the youth group enjoy working on the radio program to promote the warm family’s campaign in the community. It is also beneficial that the children have had chances to improve their public speaking potentials before these little hands will be moving to the real world of work.

That is a story of a group of ‘young people’ who are filled high energy to work on the radio in order to strengthen the relationship of people in their community. On the other hand, they are just a small group who might not be able to make a big change, but it is believed that these young little hearts are filled with hopes and dreams to make a big difference in the future.