Good Morning from Thailand!

L-R Matt, Elnie, Sue, and Supattra. The black suit-ers at the Mae Fa Luang Foundation

Subject: Good Morning from Thailand!

Time has been flying by so quickly because of the busy schedule. Friday – Sun felt like one long day because we landed in BKK at 6:30 am after a 16 hour flight and jumped right into things.  It was fun spending our first day here like tourists with sightseeing and some light shopping. First order of business: MBK for the essentials I.e. Thai sim cards for our cell phones + a data plan.  The price bargaining game begins. We all know not to speak English (so the vendors will think we are natives) if we want to get a good deal. Wellllll, that didn’t work out too well for me because as soon as I approached a vendor, they would greet me with a “hello” and continue in English! Darn. Good thing Sue was with me because she’s great at this game and closed the deal for me!

Sightseeing was a blast. I was most excited about visiting the Vimanmek Mansion, King Rama V’s residence because it was the one place on the sightseeing agenda that I had not visited before. This place is simply amazing. Built in 1900, it is the world’s largest teakwood structure. It doesn’t look huge from the outside, but it’s vastness (81 rooms!) is revealed once you step inside. I felt as if I were transported back in time upon entering because everything is so well-preserved. It’s just mind-blowing to think that His Majesty once resided here.

Monday was our first working day.  We began with a study visit at the Mae Fa Luang Foundation (MFLF).  The staff walked us through the organization’s history and mission and vision.  The organization was founded by the Princess Mother in 1987. The name means “Royal Mother From the Sky”, is a nickname the hill tribes gave her because she would travel to remote mountainous areas that were only accessible by helicopter to better the living conditions of rural Thais.

The foundation takes a people-centric development approach with an end goal of providing people with sustainable and licit livelihoods. The model tackles poverty and lack of opportunity, which are the roots causes of problems like narcotic crop cultivation, human trafficking, weak social structure, environmental degradation, and the prevalence of infectious diseases. The MFLF developed this model through the work in Doi Tung and beyond, refining traditional Alternative Development and crop substitution methods to tackle poverty through three interventions – solving the problem of health, livelihood and education. Their main objective is “To transform poor and vulnerable communities from socio-economic dependency on subsistent living, to full socio-economic sufficiency in a participatory manner”.

I was impressed and proud to learn that through several decades of development work, the MFLF developed a set of best practices based on the evolution of the model in Doi Tung and applied them to projects in other countries: Doi Tung II (Union of Myanmar), Doi Tung III (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan), and Doi Tung IV (Republic of Indonesia).