Roy Wan Pan Pba project is located not far from a small village called Kuan Mai Bong (hill of timber). It’s a Buddhist village situated in a remote area of Cha-uat district of Nakorn Sri Tammarat province, Southern Thailand. Population of the village consists of approx. 720 people (212 homes). Most villagers make a living on their property such as rubber plantation and fruit orchard. Some others are temporary workers earning wages from occasional hire.

The project was started from nothing but motivation and solidarity in March 2011 by the initiatives of a local environmental activist Pi Ju ( Mr Surasak Yentua)along with support of Kuan Mai Bong villagers and DaLaa pilot volunteers. Its objective is to focus on participants (kids, volunteers, and locals) to be aware of importance of staying self-sufficient in their environment and to respect it as a vital part of their life. This atmosphere is the basic key of the site that everyone can feel and learn from. Volunteers are working/learning in the week and spreading their experience/feelings with local kids who are coming on Saturdays. We believe the growing temptation of parents to send their kids to study in the city (for “better education”) and the dream of some young locals to leave their village for the consumption world can be refrained by organizing activities, learning and sharing with volunteers from outside. Volunteers are at the same time students and actors of the project.

Since 2011, Pi Ju has supervised this project to create a kind of model of sustainable garden. Thanks to great help from the locals and volunteers that they managed to build most facilities to welcome people to live and visit. There is now adequate availability of food from the vegetables garden, and fruit trees which already planted.

Food Autonomy is indeed vital to man and Alternative Education is important as well as to give kids the possibility to learn some basic skills of life that are often neglected at regular schools.

The project site is located in a mountainous village of Ban Tad Mountain Range. It is approx. 16 kilometers far from the main road reaching up to the mountain. It is surrounded by rubber plantation, fruit orchards and scattered settlement of villagers’ homes. The project is less than a kilometer from the small village center.

For your entire stay, you’ll live with Pi Ju’s family. They are a father (Pi Ju), a mother named Pi Nong and their little son named Roy Wan. You know now where the project’s name is derived from

“It is to build and run this project together”.
There is still some construction work to be built on/repaired in the project area. As part of the team, volunteers share great support to the local project to help keep the school and its landscape in good order. They are given responsibility to take care of vegetable garden, mushroom shed, compost making, tree nursery and seeds collection. One of the school plans concerning the campaign of agricultural self-sufficiency is that people need no buying food from a market but to grow or to raise whatever edible and make it into meals for their families.

On Saturdays, village kids gather at the project site to do activities with volunteers. Volunteers decide together how to organize the Saturday’s activities. The opportunities are endless: teaching different subjects such as basic English, art, agriculture, games. The kids vary in age (it can be from 6 to 20). This is never a problem. They like to participate in activities together. If you know any activities worth arranging for the kids from your country or any teaching ideas, please bring supplies you may need with you.

In everyday life, apart from main tasks, you are also expected to help with the family’s daily tasks which are helping preparing meals for family members, washing dishes, watering plants in dry season, and keeping the house area, kitchen, coffee-tea table, bathrooms and restrooms tidy and clean. Moreover, you can spend some time after work with villagers in the village when you’re not very tired from your main tasks.

Drinking habit of male villagers -
You may be surprised to see men gather up for their after-work drinking party. After the exhausting day from gardening work, drinking is what they normally enjoy. It’s a local habit, way of community lifestyle.

From mid-March till mid-May and October’s time, it’s school holidays throughout Thailand. It means that you can create more activities with local kids at the project site.

Happening yearly from October to December, gardening work and other activities may be reduced because of the monsoon season (lots of rain). However, the project will still open for application. Volunteers coming during this period should acknowledge that they will have a lot of time “indoors”, here we would rather say “under roofs”.

- To support Roy Wan Pan Pba project.
- To experience and see the importance of “Food Autonomy and Alternative Education”.
- To build good relationship between volunteers and local people.
- To let children be familiar with volunteers and learn in international/multi-cultural atmosphere.

Huts shared with other volunteers.

Cha-uat district, Nakorn Sri Tammarat province, Southern Thailand.

Hat Yai (from Bangkok you can choose to travel by plane, bus or train).

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

shared bamboo huts in the project host’s compound .

Baan Kok Riang, Klong Hoy Khong district, Songkhla province, Southern Thailand.

Hat Yai (from Bangkok you can choose to travel by plane, bus or train).

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.

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.

- 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.

Baan Ta Yang is a Muslim village located a few kilometers away from the coastline of Andaman Sea in Satun province, Southern Thailand. It is geologically an island in which it is connected by the 2 bridges leading to La Ngu town, district of Satun province. Villagers’ occupation is mainly individual labor making a living on their rich natural resources that is river palm tree of which its particular leaf, “Bai Jaak” (Thai name), is well-known for making roofs, handicraft like baskets and tobacco roll. Its landscape and quality of soil in general are really suitably appropriate to this kind of tree, and the products processed are of good quality. The second main occupation of the villagers is fishery industries as the village is surrounded by river leading to the Andaman Sea.

Bang Leem is one of Baan Ta Yang villagers and he is an initiator of this project. He believes that the village and children’s homes should be a principal place to learn about life. However, nowadays, the community is facing difficulties to manage this role as some parents start to think that to acquire better education for their children is to send them away to schools in town including private ones that intuition fees are so costly.

To be noticed, this project this year 2014 has been firstly commenced as one of our new ‘DaLaa long-term project sites”. Pilot volunteers are strongly welcome but we would inform they should be told of occasional absence of responsible DaLaa project coordinator as he also has responsibilities in the office. However, you will have Bang Leem, he's always there.

the first idea of Bang Leem is to give opportunities to local kids to learn English. He sees it an important tool for their future. Percentage of local kids’ language abilities is very low. They only know very basic words, few conversations like “How are you? “I am fine” “Thank you and you?” even if their verbal pronunciation is not really right. It reflects hard situations why quality of kids’ education in rural areas is still undeveloped. Bang Leem is now taking this project very seriously and wish that international volunteers can help support him. Therefore, his place will be offered a place where kids can come in which activities will be organized for the.

this would literally go along with this proverb “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. By embedding yourself as a long-term volunteer being part of the village life, to solve your curiosity about our Thai culture though its Muslim community, we hope by living in the community of Baan Ta Yang, you will get deeply into our traditions that we live, learn and work together!

Around his area, there’s a compact land that volunteers can grow their own vegetables. Non-chemical, self-sustainable agriculture is one of the aims the host and villagers are taking into consideration. And it also is our aim to spread this action “food autonomy”.

- Supporting ideas of the project host with benefits towards better education of the village kids.
- Locals become able to communicate in English.
- Preserving the local traditions and wisdom.
- Long-lasting learning exchange between villagers, their children and international volunteers.
- Acknowledging importance of sustainable agriculture.
- Understanding the importance of the village community life.

A big hut shared with other volunteers.

Baan Ta Yang village, La Ngu, Satun province, Southern Thailand.

Hat Yai (from Bangkok you can choose to travel by plane, bus or train).

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.

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.

- 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.