The New Year started for us with a house shaking bang from the fireworks at the nearby Chinese School. Less than a year ago Thai-Experience started - and so far it is a success story. We had volunteers from 7 countries and were able to support 8 schools and projects with volunteers.

December came with some pretty cool days, a long waited for relief after a long and very hot summer. Beginng of January the temperatures were already raising but we hope to get some more cool days during February. So all coming next months, don't forget to pack a sweater. It might be fresh.

Thank you, all volunteers and supporters, for helping us getting some Thai children a better education.

New library for Baan Prao Neua build with TEOs help

Baan Prao Neua School has a new library. The construction work is done and the students started using it.

What will happen next?

The headmaster asked for ideas how he can encourage his students to read. Now, a nice place where to read is a start. A next step could be regular readings in Thai and English by native speakers. In future we will ask some of our volunteers to go there once a week, sit down with a group of children and read from a childrens book. At the moment we are also looking for Thais to take over the Thai readings.

Claire and Pete from Spain donated some English children books, but the book shelves are still very empty and donations of more books welcome. (more in our December newsletter)

Pictures of the construction

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Animation project in Nong Song Hong

How do you make models for animations from plaster cine? Gary, an animation specialist, came from Ireland to teach Thai students in Nong Song Hong.

After buying a lot of plaster cine, Gary went to school first showing several groups of students how to make the models. Not an easy task, he came back from school completely exhausted the first two weeks. One of the English teacher helped with translations while later a group of twenty students went on to create their own short animations, taking a photo of every single movement. Within a few days several scenes were developed and filmed.

The students learned to handle the software and created their own animations. Some resembled favourite cartoon characters and there was also a Harry Potter animation. The creativity the children developed was astonishing. Some were so occuied with their work, they stayed during the lunch break and had to be send home at the end of the day.

We believed that everyone would have a lot of fun, but that it would be such a great success, we did not exspect. Students, teachers - everyone was happy. And at the volunteer house, whenever we were sitting together and there was some plaster cine on the table one started playing with it and soon short stories developed here also. We did not film them, giving Gary a break after a long day at school, but here is a photo.

By chance while we ran the project, a representative of HM King Bumiphol visited the school to bring donations for the school. Accompanied by press and TV crews the group learned about the project. Interest was high and so later Matichon, a Thai nation-wide published newspaper ran a half page article about the project and Channel 3 reported about it. We missed the TV show but they promised us a tape.

Thai press coverage (including translation)

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Thai-Experience.org's website is changing internet host

During February we will move our website to a new host. In the past we had problems sending email to aol users, so we decided to move to a host that gives us some more control over our emails and also some nice extra features.

What does it mean for you? There might be some delay with sending emails but generally we hope to get it all done without problem. You will still find us under the same web address!

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