Thailand
Focus: Community Development
Location: Mae Kachan, Chiang Rai Province
Language: English and Thai
Housing: Cabbages and Condoms Resort
Costs & Credits:
Check our application section for details.
Course Requirements: Check the syllabus.
If you have always wanted to do something, this is your chance. If you have ever wanted to go where the real action it, this is your program. If you are not afraid of rolling your sleeves up, getting your hands dirty, plunging into the entirely new, eating things you can’t name and waking up to night sounds you can’t identify, you are going to love Global PACT Thailand!
Global PACT Thailand 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 submersion, “full-contact” cross-cultural program in development. You will live at a resort dedicated to stopping the AIDS epidemic in Thailand. (Yes, the sign by the road says: "This is where the rubber meets the road".) You will walk long ways along the rice paddies to interview farmers about their needs, listen to mothers talk about their dreams for their children's futures, eat local food, dress and behave in keeping with local customs.
On the way home, we will spend two days in Bangkok to see the great temples, the klongs and the night life, but for the duration of the program we will be in Mae Kachan, a small, rural town in Chiang Rai province. Here a third of the population lives below the official poverty rate of 50 cents a day. Here many kids leave sixth grade for work in distant cities as sweatshop workers or prostitutes. Here the Hill Tribes that figure so prominently in the tourist literature struggle to make a living without citizenship. Away from the population centers of Thailand, we will also be far from concerns about Thai politics. But 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.
Still with us?
Then get ready to make a difference. Who knows what project your group will decide to launch. Maybe you will help your Thai teammates start a health organization to disseminate a simple, solar water purification system. Or a small shop sewing women’s accessories that you will sell in the U.S. Or… What do you have to offer?
A Typical Day
During a typical day, you will receive six hours of Global PACT classroom instruction -- three in the morning and three in the afternoon. You will listen to lectures, interact with instructors as a class, and work one-to-one with a small, multi-national group and Global PACT trainers. You and your team members will make frequent class presentations to the large group. On some days you will travel around the city conducting research for your project, and on the final day your group will conduct a live press conference to introduce your project to the Thai press. After class, you will be free to hang out with your classmates, although some project work will require you to work with your team after classroom hours are over.
