Cover and Thailand Article

8/4/2019 Cover and Thailand Article

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gazette

T H E

M A G A Z I N E

O F

F R A N K L I N C O L L E G E

S W I T Z E R L A N D

S u m m e r 2 0 1 1

T H E F R A N K L I N

Service Learning

in Thailand

Jane LaFarge Hamill 03

Art as International

Language

Graduation 2010/2011

The Taylor Institute

A Graduate Program

at Franklin


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The illustrations in this article are from the spring semester 2010 Thailand travel journal of Blue Delliquanti 11. Blue taught English at the local

school while she was in Thailand as other members of the group helped build homes for locals. Photo of Blue (facing page) by Greg Wen 11.


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Imagine strapping on a headlamp, walking into a dry and dusty rice paddy under the stars and hunt-

ing for your dinnerof crickets.

Crickets taste like the oil theyre fried in, quips Dean Leslie Guggiari. Theyre not badand are

a great source of protein. Following the fried cricket was a yummy ant egg delicacy. According to

the Dean, they werent quite as appetizing.

Not every college Dean is willing to nibble on a crispy cricket, but Franklins Leslie Guggiari, Dean

of Student Life and Engagement, isnt typical as Deans goshes typically Franklin. Guggiari and her

students had traveled halfway around the world to learn and to serve. Reasons enough to rise to anyculinary challenge.

Franklin College has a global perspective on higher education, Guggiari explains. We have a

great responsibility to teach students about the worldabout world cultures and sustainabilityand

not just through textbooks, but through hands-on experiences. Franklin believes that learning

doesnt necessarily have to happen in a classroom. It also happens through service work.

By Sally Stepanek Cox


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Teaching students about cultures and sus-tainability has recently taken Guggiari and agroup of 14 Franklin students far from theLugano classrooms and posh dining-hallfare to the province of Surin in eastern

Thailand, to Ban Naudom, a rural village of100 residents, mostly farmers, in one of thepoorest regions of the country.

This Academic Travel focused on servicelearning, Guggiari points out. Our under-standing of service learning, however, isnot to be confused with volunteer workor community service. We engaged in atrue partnership.

Students were able to gain a tremendous

amount of knowledge about Thai villageculture, develop lifelong friendships andexperience 13 days of hands-on service. Inexchange, the villagers also made lifelongfriendsand also received three new houses

as donations.This was a collaborative partnership,Guggiari says, not the old-fashioned conceptof volunteer work. We didnt build new homesfor the village of Ban Naudom to makeourselves feel good, but to serve and learn. It

was a win-win situation for everyone.Dean Guggiaris Academic Travel in

March, 2010, was designed to exposeFranklin students to an East-Asian culture

and to allow students to discover andexperience firsthand the socio-economicculture of Thai villagers. The Travel alsooffered Franklin studentsa group com-prised of Nicaraguans, Americans and

Braziliansa method of using their ownresources to benefit the Thai people directly Those resources were largely made up odedication, patience, hard labor and 13 daysof sweat and sore muscles.

Building cement and brick walls provedto be grueling work for the Franklinconstruction crew, who worked in extremelyhigh temperatures under the blistering sun

The students were up at 7 a.m. and on the


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job site at 8 a.m., working steadily until 4:30p.m. and breaking only for lunch.

Despite the physical challenges, working with a non-English-speaking crew was anextraordinary experience for the students.

They realized how easy it was to go into this village with no common language and tomake friends in a very short period of time,Dean Guggiari notes. The students had tocommunicate nonverbally at the work sites,in restaurants and virtually everywhere in the

village. They were nervous at the beginning,but soon realized the profound connectionsthey had with their new Thai friends. Theycame to understand that the world is a small

placeand that we can all help each other.The teamwork required on any job site is

often hard to achieve, even for a crew thatspeaks the same language. But the fact thatthe Franklin students worked so well with

their Thai coworkers without a commonlanguage, Guggiari observes, is simplyamazing to me. This was a lesson in itself: weat Franklin can cross borders and learn abouteach other without any commonalities at all,

without similar religious, political or culturalviews. We can still connect as peopleandthe connections can be quite deep.

While some of the students were wellinformed about development aid and working

with villagers, having already traveled tAfrican villages on previous Academi

Travels, others were more surprised by villaglife and the amount of manual labor requiredAll were asleep, exhausted, by 10 p.m.

Two women students in the group optedout of the construction work and instead worked in the village daycare or taughEnglish in the local elementary schoolBlue Delliquantis experience teachingEnglish to village children definitely confirmed her love for the classroom and hecommitment to teaching English as a SecondLanguage overseas. For the last couple o

years, Blue explains, I had considered th


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children in India. Dean Guggiaris familysponsored one of these Indian children,prompting Guggiari to travel with Romanoon an academic trip to India in 2005, whenshe visited several of Romanos Indian

projects. From 2000 to 2010, Guggiariserved on his Board of Directors as the only

English-speaking member.In 2007, Romano started the SainamFoundation in Thailand and adopted BanNaudom as his new home, marrying a Thai

woman and building a permanent house inthe village. Hearing about Romanos new

Thai venture, Guggiari contacted him with

possibility of working as a teacher, probably anEnglish teacher, once I graduate fromFranklin. The service available while in

Thailand gave me a good chance to test mycommitment and my raw teaching skills, as

well as how I would fare in acompletely unfamiliar teachingenvironment.

Several other students areconsidering jobs in thenonprofit and development-aid sectors, and their experi-ences in the small Thai villageconfirmed that career choice.Hannah Slosss trip to

Thailand and experience withthe Sainam Foundation openedup options for working in thenonprofit sector. The summerfollowing the trip to Thailand,

Hannah interned with a non-governmental organization inWashington, D.C.

The Ban Naudom-Franklinpartnership was born out of apartnership between FranklinCollege and the SainamFoundation, a nongovernmen-tal organization that helps

Thai children who have beenorphaned or abandoned bytheir parents as well as thosechildren and their families who are extreme-ly poor, by providing educational scholar-

ships, developmental assistance in the formof micro-finance loans and medical care.The Sainam Foundation was founded by

former Lugano resident Claudio Romano, who left his lucrative career as a Swissbanker to work among the poorest of thepoor, establishing a foundation to help

an ideato gather money through FranklinsAcademic Travel Program and work withstudents to build new houses for the villagers

The students would build the walls anwindows, and the Thai locals would add the

finishing touches, finalizing the homes infive to six weeks.

Romano eagerly accepted the Deans pro-posal and became intimately involved withthe Franklin partnership from the beginning,making space for some of the Franklin stu-dents and Guggiari to sleep on the floor ofhis house. Another group of students slepton the floor of the local hairdressers salon.

And Romano made sure the students were involved in Sainams various sustainability projects aimed to revitalize BanNaudoms economy. If the students wanteddrinks during the day, for example, they pur-chased them from one of stores in town thatreceived micro-financing from the Sainam

Foundation. Students also purchased Sainam-Franklin partnership t-shirts sewn by one village shop and printed by another, shopsreceiving micro-financing from Sainam.

One of the larger aims of the SainamFoundation is to provide young women witha good education in order to stop them fromleaving the poverty-stricken Surin Provinceto find work in the sex industry inBangkokfor some, their only way to


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drained the water out of the pond to irrigatethe paddies because March is a very dryseason, Guggiari explains. The fish floppedaround in the mud and we caught them withour hands, the students at the bottom of thedrained pond, covered with mud, grabbingfishwhich we then grilled all afternoon

We were part of the villagers lives in very normal way.

To fight the debilitating heat, the stu-dents also learned to wear the typical wide-brimmed straw hats the Thai workers wore in the rice paddies and to wrascarves around mouths and necks to wardoff the extreme dryness, dirt and dustBut the challenging conditions didnt

detract from the joy of the Ban Naudom villagers. Thailand is called the land o

smiles, Guggiari notes, and its really true When you experience the Thai people, no

matter what they are living with or livingwithout, you experience a great deal of happi-ness. This was an invaluable lesson for ourstudents. Here were people who had nevergrown up in houses. In fact, the houses webuilt for them were, for some, the very firsthomes they had ever slept in. But their pover-ty didnt mean that they were unhappy. Onthe contrary.

The Franklin students learned many life-long lessons. As Guggiari observed, The

support their families. The Foundation isalso working to provide a rice mill for local

workers to free them from corrupt middlemen who rent out not only the mill but alsothe tractors needed for harvesting the ricepaddies, often at exorbitant rental fees.

Franklin students were able toobserve Sainams successful sustain-ability efforts up close. They visitedRomanos mother-in-laws home,

where local women wove silk on loomsand sewed scarves that eventually sellin Switzerland, providing a substantialincome for Ban Naudom families.Romano and Sainam are working hard tobring a self-sufficient lifestyle to these

people, Guggiariexplains. The vil-lagers want to liveproudly and happily

on their own with-out being dependenton other people.

To prepare theFranklin studentsto live and work insuch a vastly differ-ent environment,Romano visited the

Franklin campus with his wife to explain vil-lage life. In their pre-travel meetings, stu-dents learned how thesex industry of Bangkokimpacts rural life; reviewed

expected behavior for westerners in a Buddhistculture; and discussed theextensive required readinglist provided by DeanGuggiari, which included A History of Thailand;Culture Shock Thailand: ASurvival Guide to Customsand Etiquette; Inside ThaiSociety: Religion, EverydayLife; Thailand: The WorldlyKingdom; and Thailand: AShort History. Each stu-

dent was also expected to write a research paper,keep a travel journal andcomplete a final examupon return. Some stu-dents also created videoprojects. This was not asightseeing trip, the Deanaffirms, but an absorptioninto Thai village life. We

were there to learn and to serve.Taking a break from their daily work on

Saturday, the Franklin students joined their Thai friends in the village soccer leaguegamelosing terribly, according to theDean. But it was an amazing experience to

be a part of their community, amidst theclapping and cheering. On Sunday, thegroup walked to a small shack owned byClaudios wife, a fishing hut located in themiddle of the rice paddies, for an unusualday-long experience of Thai fishing. They


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students were most concerned about theimage they projected to the villagers. Theydidnt want to be perceived as the rich whitekids arriving to save the day. They truly

wanted to serve, to make friends and to learnas much about the Thai cultureas possible. Franklin students aregood at that. They know how tocross borders very well.

According to Franklinstudent Jonathan Newhall,

The trip to Thailand providedme an especially poignantinsight into how many peoplein the world live. It was cer-tainly the smallest communityand the most financiallyimpoverished place I had beentobut there was a tangiblesense of community. Thepeople were very friendly and

willing to share their food, their culture, theirknowledge, their jokes, whatever they had.

We all felt truly welcome.Dean Guggiaris goal for her students was

to understand how to meet another identity without preconceptions and without beingjudgmental. I wanted my students say, I canrespect that identity. It has a place. It has a

voice on earth, just as I do, Guggiariemphasizes. When we talk about a vastlydifferent identity, we may not accept it oreven understand it, but its so very important

to learn to respect that it exists.Franklin student Hannah Sloss reflects:My experience with the Sainam Foundationhas definitely influenced my understanding of

what it means to be a global citizen. Despitehow small the world is becoming, no one cantruly anticipate how much people fromextremely different walks of life have in com-

mon. Being a globalcitizen, in my opinion,reflects the realization

that all people have similargoals in life. And althoughthe circumstances in which

people find themselvesmay be strikingly unequal,there is a common ground:

we all seek personal fulfill-ment in providing forothers, our family, ourcommunities, our countriesand our society.

Hannah, who workedin the nursery and primary

school, shares that her experience in Thailand was more than just an academic course otravel adventure: The children I met and thebonds I formed with the people in BanNaudom were real, she says, something I willnever forget. To be so unconditionally acceptedand embraced by strangers has since made mere-examine my own tendency to judge othersprematurely. Overall, this experience not onlytweaked my worldview, it also deepened myown self-awareness.

At the closing ceremony for the Franklintravelers, the entire village joined in thefarewell, tying yellow strings around the

wrists of their departing guests, a commonThai custom that promises enduring friend-ship. We had up to 50 yellow strings aroundour wrists, Guggiari recalls. Our new Thaifriends were crying as they said goodbye. Thestudents were shocked, realizing that they


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had not shared one word of English withmost of their new village friends, but deepconnections had been forged.

For the Franklin team, lasting cross-bor-der friendships, developed through service,

will redefine sustainability for years tocomelifelong friendships, three rock-solid new houses and enduring lessons of

what it means to embrace another cultureas ones own, if only for a matter of days.

Although this Thailand experience was

the first time Blue Delliquanti had visited adeveloping country, she affirms that seeinghow dedicated the locals in Ban Naudom

were to educate themselves and theirchildren and further the development oftheir village, even outside of Sainam's signif-icant influence, was really inspiring. I felt

welcomed and accepted by the communityand appreciated for my efforts, and I in turnfelt strongly connected with their wellbeingand the future development of their village.

To me, that is what it means to be a globalcitizen, to have a lasting bond with a com-munity thousands of miles away from yourown and being invested in their wellbeing.

To see photos of the Thailand trip:www.fc.edu/thailandphotos

To see videos of the Thailand trip:www.fc.edu/thailandvideos

For more information about the SainamFoundation: www.sainam.net

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