Warm Heart at Work

กิจกรรมพาน้องเยี่ยมบ้านเป็นกิจกรรมหนึ่งที่โครงการการศึกษาและบ้านพักเด็กของมูลนิธิอุ่นใจ ได้ดำเนินอยู่เป็นประจำทุกเดือนโดยทำเป็นเดือนละครั้ง โดยกิจกรรมนี้มีตจุดมุ่งหมายเพื่อให้เด็กในบ้านพักรู้สึกไม่ห่างจากครอบครัว และเป็นการเชื่อมความสัมพันธ์ที่ดีระหว่างเจ้าหน้าที่มูลนิธิกับผู้กครองเด็ก รวมถึงใช้โอกาสในการแจ้งข้อมูลเด็กระหว่างที่พำนักอยู่ในบ้านพัก
ด้วยระยะทางจากบ้านพักเด็กถึงหมู่บ้านขุนปั๋งระยะทาง 16 กิโลเมตร แต่เราใช้เวลาถึงชั่วโมงครึ่ง เนื่องจากถนนที่เดินทางเป็นถนนลูกรังที่ตัดผ่านสันเขาอันสลับซับซ้อนซึ่งต้องขับขึ้นไปอย่างระมัดระวังดดยเฉพาะฤดูฝนเพราะถ้าพลาดพลั้งอาจตกลงไปในห้วยลึก ทั้งสองข้างทางเต็มไปด้วยดงไผ่ และความชุ่มชื้นและอุดมสมบูรณ์ของพันธุ์ไม้นานาพันธุ์ ทำให้เรามีทั้งสองอารมณ์ในการเดินทางบางครั้งหวาดเสียวกับการเดินทาง บางครั้งก็รู้สึกดื่มด่ำไปกับธรรมชาติสองข้างทาง เมื่อไปถึงที่หมายเราก็ได้พบกับไมตรีจิตรและมิตรภาพ ของชาวบ้านแม่สูนซึ่งเชาวบ้านส่วนใหญ่เป็นชนเผ่ากะเหรี่ยงป็นและเป็นเป้าหมายของการเดินทาง เด็กๆตื่นเต้นที่ได้กลับบ้านไปพบครอบครัว ผู้ปกครองต้อนรับเราด้วยรอยยิ้มทีจริงใจพร้อมกับน้ำชารสดีจากยอดดอย ถือว่าเป็นสัมพันธภาพที่ดีต่อเราเป็นอย่างมาก

Hey Everyone, Josh here, today I will be finishing up my first full week of teaching. I began teaching English to the children at the Children’s Home, and others from the villages of Huay Sai and Baan Dong, two Fridays ago. The class size is a little over twenty and most of the students are between the ages of 10-15.

I came to Warm Heart to develop a solar water heater made from recyclable materials. When I found out I also had the opportunity to teach English, something I have never done before, I couldn’t wait to take on the challenge.

So far the class has a lot of energy, and things have been going really well. I look forward to teaching later today, what is already going to be my fifth class.

Looking down on the kitchen (left) and boy's house (right)

Wandering around at ground level, I am amazed by what we have created in the past few months, but a couple of days ago I got a whole new perspective on our realm. P’Win and his crew hauled the tower for the water tanks erect and when it was secure, I climbed to the top. Here’s what Warm Heart looks like “from the air.”

Looking east across the dam to girls' house

Looking northeast across the slowly filling large fishpond, dam on right

Shafer, Tara DeWorsop (Warm Heart Microenterprise and Microfinance) and Mike Horst, leader of the TCNJ team, inspecting the tower

It is really hot and dry in Phrao right now, especially at our land! Everything is covered with a fine red dust. But there is hope. The TCNJ Engineers Without Borders team arrives in just a couple of days to bring us water. Praise the Lord. We cannot wait.

The TCNJ team surveyed our land last summer and spent the academic year developing the plans for a site-wide water management system. Their plan calls for a deep well (more than 80 meters) with a solar pump, a huge underground storage tank, a water tower crowned by two shiny stainless steel tanks and then a web of 4″ pipes that run across the entire property.

Well head in foreground with tower pad and tank excavation in background

The ten member team will (somehow) be bringing the donated solar pump with them when they fly in on May 20th. In preparation for their arrival, Warm Heart’s contractor has been hard at work building the basics. The slab for the tower is in, the pipes for the tower itself have been delivered and the hole for the underground tank has been excavated.

The pick-up in the background is carrying the pipes to build the tower.

For the time being we are surviving on bottled drinking water and wash water pumped out of the fish pond, so we cannot wait for that solar pump to arrive! But every day with offer thanks to the TCNJ Engineers Without Borders team. Without them we have no idea what we would have done. After all, they not only designed the entire system - they have raised every penny the entire project will cost!

Warm Heart has only the warmest thanks for the TCNJ EWB team - our largest donors to date!

The first group of kids is settling in. For the moment we have just five, two boys and three girls. Nung Min is expected any day (in fact we may take a field trip to Kung Pan to get her) and others are in process.
Move-in day was perfectly orderly from an adult, logistical point of view, but the kids were just overwhelmed. On Sunday P’Oy, Nung Oy and P’Pleu played get-to-know you games with the kids (who also didn’t know each other). The two highlights of the day were writing and illustrating autobiographies and planting flowers. You can get a feel for each of our kids by looking at their autobiographies, which I’ve posted below (and of course if you read nine year old Thai, you can read all about them). As for the flowers, the Thai staff members donated potted plants from their own homes so that the kids would have the beginnings of a garden. Later this week, P’Pleu and the kids will go to a nursery to chose seedling.

Meet Nung Ful

Meet Nung Max

Meet Nung New

Meet Nung Suda

Meet Nung Oam

The kids came a day early. We discovered this 12 hours before they were to show up. This created quite a tizz. Dirty and smelly as we all were, we hopped in the truck and rushed to town to buy sleeping mats, sheets, gas cooker, cooler and everything else we needed in the half hour before stores closed. We made it, but just. If nothing else, our outrageous appearance and the volume of our purchases occasioned lots of questions and resulted in great PR!

A picture is worth a 1,000 words - so why try to tell you about move-in day? Here are a few pictures to give you a sense of the scene. For those of you who are students or have college age kids, the whole thing looked and went exactly like move-in day on campus - without the traffic jam.

The house was ready.

The bathrooms were ready.

The chicken house was ready.

The staff was ready - and waiting.

Nung Oam was waiting.

Finally! It took three and a half hours to get down from the mountain. The required circle on the floor.

Not everyone was immediately enthralled.

At times it really did seem a bit over the top.

But teddy bears rule, even in Thailand.

For the past week the Warm Heart staff as worked like stoats under the Thai hot season sun to prepare for the kids’ arrival. The homes are done! But of course the construction crew left a minor disaster behind - cement bags, energy drink bottles, broken bricks and tiles, etc. And no one had pruned our lamyai and banana orchards for years. So guess what we did? That’s right.

We picked up.

Mae Joom and Tara hard at it

We swept.

P'Oy on the long sweep

We took restful breaks.

We had a lot of fun.

Truth...

...and consequences

Mae Joom is camera shy.

No you don't!

Tara is not.

What, me modest?

P’Pieu is philosophical.

Just what is he thinking about?

P’Toon is just crazy.

Hello?

Good friends

Tired little girls

What a sorry crew! Can you help?

Take a minute - literally - to watch Dan Christopher’s great short about the start of construction at the Children’s Homes site. And stay tuned! We will have photos of the nearly completed homes later today or tomorrow! The construction deadline is the 27th and we are on schedule.
Warm Heart Homes Under Construction

I recently looked at the blog published by Paul Kuehn at Global PACT. I really liked the fact that it combines posts about real people doing real things to solve real problems. It’s not just about how the dot.com billionaires have decided to find a cure for AIDS. It’s about how groups of college students have solved some small but significant problem in their university’s neighborhood using the knowledge they learned in class. I love to have evidence to point to when people say - as so many do - “but what can I do?”

The other thing I like about the Global PACT blog - http://blog.globalpact.org - is that it’s got lots of information about how to make change. After all, wanting to do something is seldom enough, knowing how to do it makes you a whole lot more likely to succeed!

Reading the Global PACT blog also made me think that it would be useful for us to offer links to other blogs that deal with our areas of interest: community development and activism, kids, sustainable development, microenterprise, microfinance, alternative energy and the environment, women and development, public health.

Do you have any favorites to suggest? Please let me know in a comment.

The pictures tell the story! I can already imagine the kids digging around the foundations to plant flowers.

Girls' house (top) and bathroom (bottom)

Interior of girls' house

The kitchen/dining room

Porch of the dining room and view toward boys' house (right) and bathroom (left)