Project Thailand 2010

Project Thailand 2010

When: August 22, 2010 – September 5, 2010

Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Executive Summary

The importance of high school and college-level education has become more evident in the changing face of Bangkok’s socioeconomic landscape. Many Bangkok youths are unable to continue their education because of socioeconomic reasons. Project Thailand’10 aims to bridge the ‘education opportunity’ gap among Bangkok youths.

Wat Nimmanoradi School, our local partner in the outskirt of Bangkok, is an elementary-middle school with very well-equipped facilities. A few alumni from this school has made their way to higher education, with a promising future, yet there are many more who pertain potential but are prevented from the chances to grow. PT10 hopes to open the windows of opportunity for those individuals by improving a career and education guidance system.

During the 2 weeks of our project, we will organize series of events, aiming to help students realize the passion in their lives as well as to encourage them to strive for it. Additionally, we will work with and motivate a group of high school students from the country’s top institutes to step up and learn the problem from the first hand. We hope to develop leadership and foster public service initiative spirits among students at Nimman School and our high school student mentees

Community Challenge

Wat Nimmanoradee School is a large public school in suburb of Bangkok with relatively well-equipped facilities. However, the school is situated in a middle to low income neighborhood with various social problems. Some students were forced to leave school for family work or prostitution. For example, a math-whiz prodigy friend of one of our project leaders was unable to go on to college due to family’s difficulty. On the cultural level, there is a somewhat common view that high education is relatively an unimportant factor in their life and is seemingly beyond their reach. The challenge pertaining to this belief is that students do not make effort in school and are not motivated to become as successful as they could potentially be. The result is the school faces low classroom attentiveness, below-standards academic achievement and below-average percentage of students who go on to high school and college.

Objective

  •  Empower and equip students with necessary skills and information for their self-development, especially along the educational path
  • Improve guidance system within the school and open opportunity windows for the students
  • Promote service leadership spirit among Thai youth

Approaches

  • Mentorship and tutoring program
    • Pair up middle school students with a local high school students from top schools in Bangkok as to promote peer relationship and inspire middle school students.
    • Start a tutoring program with English and Science clubs.
  • Outreach initiative
    • Organize opportunity fairs for both parents and students (e.g. guest speakers, high school admission panel, etc)
    • Initiate drop-in advising/office hour
    • Education plan workshop
  •  Leadership Development
    • Train high school students leadership skill through different activities and discussion, rather than imposing leadership theory on them
    • Let them investigate the issue along with us, while fostering peer relationship between them and their peer middle school students
    • At the conclusion of the project, we will encourage them to come up with a solution and take ownership of their own future project

Local Partner

  •  Wat Nimmanoradee School is a elementary-middle school located on suburb of Bangkok in low-income neighborhood

Team Member Responsibility

  • Work with local teachers to design and facilitate activities, aiming to provide more opportunity for higher education for the middle school students
  • Engage middle school students seeking advice on higher education
  • Publicize to/recruit highly motivated high school students interested in service leadership
  • Provide leadership training for both high school and middle school students
  • Mentor high school students and help them foster peer relationship with the selected middle school students
  • Mentor students who may come up with further projects of their own

Skill Required

  • Passion to guide younger people to success
  • Interested in learning different culture
  • Interest in Thailand/ SE Asia in general
  • Willingness to take initiative and take responsibility
  • Eagerness to have fun!

Project Leaders

  • Natthacha Assawachananont (natthacha ‘at’ sealnetonline.org)
  • Tiam Jaroensri (tiam ‘at’ sealnetonline.org)