American Jewish World Service in Thailand

Although we are back, I'm still processing through some of the Thai photos and will include some Thailand posts for a while.


Looking to the future, I had surfed various international volunteer websites and saw that the American Jewish World Service had various projects in India and Thailand. I wasn't able to meet any of the volunteers while we were in India in November (though I had some email contact and one good phone conversation). But in Chiengmai, I got to meet the four volunteers there at the time as well as the Thai coordinator.

Mike had just arrived a week earlier, but he was already involved in the Thai non-profit he was matched with, working to develop an organic market where organic farmers could sell there stuff. He's an interesting guy who has an MBA, worked in corporate America in New York, and has traveled widely. While he speaks Arabic, he's now working on his Thai. We had dinner with him at a middle eastern restaurant in the Chiengmai night bazaar and talked about all sorts of things. A couple nights later the whole group had a dinner and we were invited too.


Grib, on the left, is the Thai coordinator of the program. She also is involved with programs involving Burmese refugees, so during the dinner I called Somprasong in Umphang and let them talk about what they are both doing. Nick, whose been in Chiengmai about eight months, is teaching photography and working with a group that promotes community theater - for both traditional and more contemporary work. As I understand, it involves the communities developing their own productions and including issues facing the community such as health and other issues. He's getting connected with a whole network of groups and sounded really into his work. I'm not doing it justice here at all. Since he teaches photography, we did have a discussion about teaching photography in the digital age. We agreed on preferring natural light to flash, even if it results in a little 'action' (otherwise known as blur) as you can see in these evening shots.


Emily and Shana were both getting ready to leave after about a year in Chiengmai. I wasn't taking notes, and it's been a couple of weeks, so I may get the details mixed up a bit, I think the general idea will be right. Shanna has been teaching English to Burmese refugee women and generally helping them to adjust and find jobs. Emily was working with a similar organization and monitoring women who were interning in jobs. She was disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to see the next round of internships. Both had very mixed feelings about leaving; they were really involved in the work they were doing and it seemed that one or both might be back in Chiengmai before too long.

If these volunteers and Krib are representative of the AJWS program, it looks pretty good.