We in DaLaa, were first introduced to this village, Ban Kok Riang, through a recommendation from one of the Hat Yai University clubs called Backpackers. The club is quite active in organizing activities involving environmental conservation, trekking, and initiating activities with the local communities. Some of these activities they did together with the villagers in Baan Kok Riang were planting trees at Pa Dam Watershed Waterfall and also by the roadsides as well as organizing activities with the kids and adults in the village. Whenever they organize projects in the village, DaLaa will be always invited to join. As up until now, it has been going on for almost 8 years and the university club is still keeping in touch with the community in the village and initiated beneficial projects that support the community.
Mr. Suthep Suwankrajang, host and project coordinator, known as Lung Jaeng, has an interest to produce his own organic food. He himself does not have any agricultural background, however, he took the initiative wanting to turn his land properties covering approximately 1 hector of empty land into a place where everyone can learn and experiment on non-chemical agriculture. The main purpose for this effort is to try to create a learning space functioning sort of as a working model for the surrounding community members, especially for the new generation, to grow healthy organic, non-chemically induced rice, vegetables, and fruits. According to Lung Jaeng’s observation, our societies nowadays are so used to the convenient way of living and buying everything from the market without realizing that most of the food products sold in market heavily contained dangerous chemicals and pesticides, which would eventually lead to severe health problems. Unfortunately, the project initiator started their own plans, without having much support from anyone else.
Since 4 years, Lung Jaeng started all by himself, growing vegetables and fruit trees such as pineapples, coconuts, mangoes, papayas, aubergines, Chinese lettuce, etc. Moreover, he and his few friends also grow rice for their own families and volunteer project during August-October and harvest during January-February. Apart from him, there are also other few friends in the same village, Lung Sian, and Lung Chiaw, who have been supporting and coordinating with his initiatives. They always come by for a visit and give Lung Jaeng advice on how to grow vegetables.
DaLaa sees this a meaningful project for us and volunteers to be involved in, as well as taking the opportunity to learn about this highly sustainable self-reliant living, especially the most crucial during the initial time of the project when there are a lot of work to do and things to get improved around. Moreover, it’s very important to give them all the help and support that they need in bringing about awareness, and in the meantime build-up collaborations and train apprentices within their own and neighboring communities.
By sending volunteers to work with Lung Jang, DaLaa hopes that we can support him with manpower, energy and skills from the volunteers, and also help him to promote the idea of non-chemical agriculture among the villagers. Since August 2012, several long-term volunteers participated in the project site, as well as 2 short-term work camps and a few weekend camps were organized there. We also did basic construction such as building toilets and digging out wells at the garden or some construction in the house compound for volunteers.
Daily life and works in the project:
Considering that this is going to be the initial attempt of the long term project, the volunteers should be able to handle physical hard work, expecting that there will be some construction work involved. Normally, in the morning, you will start work in the vegetable garden around 8 or 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. and again during 3 or 4 p.m. until 6.30 p.m. The work time can differ each day depending on heat, amount of work that has to be done as well as your own ability and endurance. The work schedule may be decided on daily basis depending on what has been done on the day before and the condition of weather. However, there’ll be few hours break during the hottest time of the day. Everyday work will involve nurturing and watering vegetables, plants and fruit trees, collecting vegetables for your own consumption and growing seeds or nursing young plants. During the hot afternoon and at the end of the day, you may have your own free time, or you can take the opportunity together with our project hosts and coordinator to further learning the local language. Sometimes, Lung Jaeng may take volunteers to social events in the community, such as on important Buddhist holidays, weddings or funerals in order to get the volunteers to be involved in community events and to enhance the relationship with the locals.
Project host and coordinator:
Who will be working closely with you are Lung Jaeng and his son. Apart from them, DaLaa coordinator and staff may visit regularly during the weekdays or on the weekends. Bringing some Thai phrase books with you can be useful for communication with the project hosts and the villagers during your stay.
Aims of project:
- To support the efforts for this place to be an agricultural learning space for interested people. - To learn from each other among volunteers themselves, and from volunteers to villagers vice versa through “learning by doing” concept. - To build good relationship between volunteers and local people. - To be a part of Baan Kok Riang community.
Accommodation:
shared bamboo huts in the project host’s compound .
Hat Yai (from Bangkok you can choose to travel by plane, bus or train).
Participation Fee:
The minimum period is a 2 months service.
The fee will be used for living expenses (gas, water, electricity, food) and materials used in projects/activities. Some part of the fee will be used to support Thai volunteers and our organization.
8,000 THB per month (approx. 200 Euro). If you stay over 3 months, from the 4th month onwards, instead of paying 8,000 THB every month, we reduce the fee to 7,000 THB (approx. 175 Euro) per month.
Example:
A 6-month stay volunteer, during months 1-3, 8,000 THBx3=24,000 THB, and months 4-6, 7,000 THBx3=21,000 THB. Altogether 45,000 THB/6 months.
Basic conditions of DaLaa MLTV Projects:
- Participants are responsible for their own travel costs and all personal expenses during free time. - Participants are responsible for taking care of their own insurance. - Participants should respect and have willingness to understand other cultures and backgrounds. - Living conditions will be in Thai style (willingness to adapt and enjoy simple conditions of living). - Willingness to work and live together, build friendships with local people and other volunteers - let's try to make this world a nice place to live in! - Participants should have basic skills/knowledge towards the project they apply for. - Participants should ask for a visa “Non-Immigrant type”. DaLaa will provide an invitation letter and other officially registered papers.
« The outside world did not interfere, because it seemed so distant, and so we spent our spare time getting to know each other and learning about each other countries', languages and cultures. Everyone was completely relaxed. This simply would not have been possible on any other type of holiday. VAP enabled me to have a truly memorable experience. »