Thailand
Focus: Community Development
Location: Mae Kachan, Chiang Rai Province
Dates: May 25 - June 21, 2009
Language: English and Thai
Housing: Cabbages and Condoms Resort
Costs & Credits:
Check our application section for details.
Course Requirements: Check the syllabus.
If you are not afraid of rolling your sleeves up and getting your hands dirty, eating food you can’t pronounce and waking up to night sounds you can’t identify, Global PACT Thailand is for you. This Activist Training Program is not for the faint of heart or the "for-credit" tourist. There will be no clubs and no dancing till dawn. You will not spend your down time baking on the beach or shopping for silks and cheap electronics. Global PACT Thailand is a “full-contact” cross-cultural program in development. Accommodations are provided at a resort dedicated to stopping the AIDS epidemic in Thailand. Participants walk through rice paddies to interview farmers about their needs, listen to mothers talk about their dreams for their children's futures, dress and behave in keeping with local customs.
On the way home, students spend two days in Bangkok to see the temples, the klongs and night life, but for the duration of the program we will be in Mae Kachan, a small, rural town in Northern Thailand. Here a third of the population lives below the official poverty rate of 50 cents a day, and many children leave sixth grade for work in distant cities as sweatshop workers or prostitutes. Away from the urban centers of Thailand, participants will also be far from concerns about Thai politics. Far from the glitzy, westernized tourist centers, we will have ample opportunity to observe the ravages of Burma’s distant civil war, environmental plunder and poverty, as well as the work of the international humanitarian community.
