When the Dragonfly Community Foundation started our work in Thailand, we knew people in many different parts of the country and had many places that we wanted to help out. Our home base of Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima) is known as the gateway to the north-eastern region, an area where we’ve worked extensively, but somehow for the first few years of our operations we hardly had any projects running in our own city. We’re happy to say that this is changing, and not just because our bottoms are sore from all those long bus rides!
The work we’re doing close to home involves placing some volunteers in local schools, and also giving some free lessons to schools in our neighbourhood. We recently arranged an English camp fun day at a local school and our volunteer teachers in training and friends helped to convince the kids at Senanaukroh School that we foreigners aren’t so scary after all. This January we’re planning another local camp as well as a building project with a local school where we’ll teach the kids about mud building and sustainability and have them help us build their school a small natural study center and composting area. Other small-scale local projects have involved raising money for flood relief in October and selling Christmas cards for here on behalf of a small orphanage in another province.
With the world becoming ever more globally entwined, people are learning a lot about all the other parts of the world, but with a little free time and the right motivation, you can learn about your own too, while making it a better place to be.
