Greetings from Khon Kaen, Thailand! Thank you for sending your students to our program. They are just now returning from taking buffaloes out to the wetlands in their Water Unit, and they are doing really well at the moment!

For those of you who have received this newsletter during the past three years, yes, welcome back. For those newcomers, welcome!

Photograph by Laksamee Putnam, University of Colorado-

V o l u m e I I I , N o . 1 O r i e n t a t i o n , S p r i n g 2 0 0 6 Sawasdee Newsletter

A “ L o n g ” O r i e n t a t i o n Last semester, we did what we call “The Long Orientation”—a full 17 days. The last group really

thought it was the way to go, so we ran “The Long Orientation” again from the Spring 2006 group. From our perspective, it went particularly well. The approach throws students into communities right off the bat, and with intensive Thai coming every day, the group had a good chance to acculturate. Students felt it was quite challenging, but they all agreed that it helped them to understand the program, group facilitation, and the “know how” to live in Thailand for the next four months.

It all started on January 17th with a day of activities in Bangkok and a delicious group dinner that evening. The next day we were out the door and on our way, with a stop for a nature hike at Khao Yai National park. Students were greeted by monkeys, and ended up watching a beautiful waterfall at the end of the trail. We then headed towards our orientation site where students would spend the next three days. Their time was filled with intensive language classes, academic, health, safety, and welfare issues, a cultural orientation and a number of sessions dedicated to group dynamics. We ended this part of orientation with a campfire and fun and games!

Our goal with community stays is to help students understand the basic principles of our program which focuses on hands-on learning experience and living with families in communities. During the first week they stayed in Nonchai community on the outskirts of Khon Kaen city. Within hours of arriving at the homes of their homestay families, the community held a gracious welcoming party with a feast of Northeastern food, a string-tying ceremony, and lots of dancing. They were given a warm welcome by Ms. Songsri, the school director, as well as by the vice mayor, Mr. Tawatchai and chairperson of the Thai Seeka Association, Ms. Supa.

T w o w e e k s o f

C o m m u n i t y s t a y s

Photograph by Eleanor Ennis, Hobart and William Smith College

They stayed at homes with 3rd-graders, and the next morning they dutifully came to community’s school where they introduced themselves in Thai to the hundreds of children studying there. Nonchai School is part of a pilot project of alternative educational being carried out by the very progressive municipal government of Khon Kaen. In conjunction with the Thai Seeka Association, the school is being groomed as a model for community-based education. CIEE has been working with the school and this association for several years, but this student group was the first to ever do homestays in the community. Reports from students and families alike indicated great satisfaction on both sides!

During their time at the school, a number of jointed Nonchai-CIEE activities were arranged, including a trip to the market to buy food and then come to the school to make lunch and eat it together. By the fifth day of their stay, students were no longer nervous and were much more confident, especially in speaking Thai. The community adored the students and although tired and wanting a bit of private space, the CIEE students, when taking leave from the school, were overwhelmed with the love and care given by the community. Many of them said they wanted to go back and spend more time with the children.

On their first day at Khon Kaen University, a representative of the Academics and International Affairs office. greeted them and gave them an introduction to the campus. Throughout that day, students also visited the registration office, the library, and the CIEE offices. The weekend provided a much-appreciated break before going to the second community.

After the first week of homestays, the students were much better prepared psychologically and linguistically for their stays in the slum communities. The slums in Khon Kaen extend along the sides of the railroad tracks that cut through the center of city. The program has had more than ten year’s of experience working with the slum community network in Khon Kaen, and has been witness to their struggles over land right issues. Though poor, these communities are very welcoming and have a way of inviting students right into their daily lives and activities.

Students were separated into three different slum communities. Our goal was for them to find out what was going on in these three different communities, using their powers of observation. During the stay, Thai language was carried out in the communities Our interns, Virginia and Phin, facilitated group dynamics activities and other workshops that could help them get the basic tools they would need throughout the semester.

Each group was also given a task: to find out what is going on in the slum communities, and how they were related. They were given no other information, but they did have a chance to sit down in their community groups and discuss how to find out about a community without knowing anything about the community in the first place. Each group then had a translated session where they could exchange with community leaders and members of their families. The exchanges went really well, and each group got bit and pieces of the story, but they could not see the entire picture until we had a workshop and the students could exchange amongst themselves. It was remarkable how much of the story they actually did piece together considering they knew nothing before the exchange. Then it was time for good-byes as the students left their second homestay community and we wound up the orientation.

U n i t I : A g r i c u l t u r e This unit really sparked the interest of students. It

involved a lot of things going on in Thailand right now—such as the free trade agreement being negotiated between Thailand and the US—as well as the participation of two Northeast farmers in a free trade conference held in Denver sponsored by the United Students for Fair Trade (USFT). Students began by reading up on the issue of agriculture from a global perspective. Lectures covered the role of the World Trade Organization, Free Trade Agreements, the history of agriculture, and the Green Revolution. Student facilitators then held a briefing where

Photograph by Sara Schaumburg,University of Pennsylvania

the group could lay out objectives for the community exchanges. They first went to Surin province and exchanged with the governor whose official policy is to make the province all organic. Students then spent a few nights living with organic farmers, and helping them with their work. On the weekend, students visited a green market in the provincial city, and then exchanged with villagers and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at a cooperative that mills its own organic jasmine rice. The cooperative has been selling organic rice to European markets for more than a decade, but it is only recently that they have been getting a market in the US. In fact, this fair trade market has been made possible largely through a network of former CIEE Thailand students organized into their own nonprofit in the US called the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange, or ENGAGE. ENGAGE, with the help of OXFAM USA, has organized two tours for Northeast farmers to meet with various groups of US citizens and to tell them of the issues facing small-scale farmers in Thailand. The students had the opportunity to meet with the two farmers who were on their way to Denver for the USFT conference. Students wrote up profiles of each that were given out at the conference.

Students also had a chance to stay with farmers using chemical fertilizers and those involved in sugar cane growing. At the end of this long unit, student facilitators wrote up a “problematic” and sent it to the student listserve, to serve as a basis for the papers each student then had to write. The problematic read as:

“Food is the basis of life on this earth... and arguably a fundamental human right. First, we'd like you to describe your favorite food! What is your relationship to it? What have been the implications of your relationship to Food? You just spent an entire unit focusing on agriculture (and including the green revolution, chemical vs. organic farming, Free Trade Agreements, fair trade, role of NGOs, small and large community networks, etc.)... How were you challenged or changed from this experience? Who moved you? What moved you? How do we as students studying globalization right now fit into the big picture of development?

Photograph by Sara Schaumburg, University of Pennsylvania

Please reflect, and refer to page 44 in your program guide for guidance and grading criteria. And have FUN!”

The students had a few free days to write their papers, and then the student facilitators closed off the

unit with a four-hour workshop.

U n i t I I : W a t e r The water unit was quite strange this time. The main problem was that villagers affected by the Pak

Mun Dam and Hua Na Dam, were all down in Bangkok trying to negotiate with the government to find redress for their problems. So after two days of introductory lectures and preparation by student facilitators, students went out to see the Pak Mun dam in the far southeast corner of the Northeast, and then went 12 hours by van to Bangkok. There, students met with villagers from the Pak Mun dam and tried to understand what villagers were seeking from the government, and why they had decided to come to Bangkok. In Bangkok, we stayed at the guesthouse of Sulak Sivaraksa, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a Buddhist scholar and social critic, and recently acclaimed as one of the “10 Most Important Thais of the Past 100 Years.” Students had a chance to exchange with Sulak who invited the group, as his guests, to attend a demonstration where he would be addressing the crowd that evening. We were a bit hesitant in accepting the invitation and go as observers, but the program’s contacts with local and international NGOs assured us that the demonstration would be perfectly safe. Nonetheless, we left immediately after Sulak spoke. Students then entered their now very familiar vans and were driven through the night back to the Northeast. The next day they met with the Royal Irrigation Department, and the following day took out buffaloes with

homestay families to the wetland areas threatened by the dam. Finally they returned to Khon Kaen, tired but happy. With the end of the second unit, all the staff, interns, and participants are leaving to do our “Where We’re At” where we can assess how everyone is doing, any changes that ought to be made in the language component aspect of the program, and anything else we ought to discuss as a program. It just so happens that we will start the affair as honored international guests at a nearby Indigenous Seed Exchange Fair, organized by the Alternative Agricultural Network of Northeast Thailand, and opened by the governor of Kalasin Province! We’ll keep you posted! Yours sincerely, David, Arunee, Supapim and Adisak D a v i d S t r e c k f u s s : : : D i r e c t o r : : : d s t r e c k f u s s @ y a h o o . c o m : : : T e l . 6 6 - 1 - 7 0 8 - 1 8 5 2 Arunee Chubkhunthod : : : Off ice Manager : : : aruneee@yahoo.com : : : Te l . 66- 1 -965-3400 Supapim Jongrak : : : Language Coordinator : : : supap im@yahoo.com : : : Te l . 66-9-944-4759 Adisak Kaewrakmuk ::: Orientation and Community Visits Coordinator ::: numerosak@gmail.com ::: Tel. 66-1-9740290

C I E E - T h a i l a n d P . O . B o x 9 1 ,

Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, 40002

THAILAND Tel/ Fax: (66)-43-347-922