My last post was about how the kids on site needed to find a way to get money for their uniforms....And everyone, thank you for offering to pitch in their own savings for this project, it's really really appreciated. By the way, we accept donations for our various projects on our newly modified website at www.depdc.org. Though I recommend donating through this organization called www.friendsofthaidaughters.org because they endorse our projects from the states which means your donation is tax deductable.

I want the kids to have their uniforms, but at the same time, for once, I'd like for them to not feel like a charity case. The NGO can take care of them up until the point that they graduate, and then they're on their own. So many of them suffer from self esteem problems, and I think it'd be so good for them if they were given the skills to earn the money for their own uniforms. The joke of a school I teach with is in serious need of improvement. Scratch that, there needs to be a renaissance. My classes need to meet more than twice a week and I wish I had less than 130 students to be responsible for. It doesn't matter how old the kids are, they all think similarly. They're not confident to think independantly. They'll know the words "I," "like, " "want," "have" "go" and various names of animals, places and fruits, but they are absolutely terrified to string a sentence together with all of those words out loud.

We had visitors come last week and they planted a small garden for us. Dayk tagged along with them, but at some point he whipped out a block of wood and a knife and started carving away. 15 minutes later he produced a model elephant. I was shocked. Why hasn't he been doing something like that every day? This is the kid that the staff gave up on. He was giving teachers in government school problems and so they pulled him out so now he goes to the school on site for hilltribe minortieis and illegal immigrants from Burma. I explained to him that if he made enough of these toy animals he could sell them in a market.

Another volunteer, Mel, introduced me to this new NGO in Mae Sai, hidden a little more into the mountains than ours. I was completely blown away. The kids made their own homes out of mud. They built their own plumbing system and bathroom, designed so that their water doesn't go to waste; it all goes straight into their fruit and vegetable garden. They design lamps made out of bamboo and make various other handicrafts including furniture and jewelry. They study English and Chinese every day in addition to Thai and other book studies. Here's my favorite part: they generate their own electricity with the windmill they made themselves. And they did all of this by reading various manuals.

Now granted, these people have a much smaller group of people to work with. They put a cap on the number of people they let in: 25, no more. We have more than 300 kids at The Half Day School alone and we're grossly understaffed...but that doesn't mean that more couldn't be done...I already voiced my complaints about classes not meeting enough for the Half Day School and there being too many of them in one classroom. They're finally adding on more days to the curriculum next term. The volunteers talked to the directing team about our neighboring NGO; the younger and better one. And the lack of vocational training offered here at our NGO. It was so relieving to see the kids doing something other than making candy this afternoon. There were kids learning to crochet in one room, kids using the weaving machines in the other and a group being coached in soccer. There was a group of about 10 of them sitting with the centre's handiman, carving away at pieces of wood making various toy models of elephants. I hope they'll have the opportunity to gloss them and paint them so that they become more marketable. It'd be so nice if they could fund their project with cash that they earn.