August 2019 Newsletter
Lemongrass is the most abundant herbal plant grown at Yaowawit especially in the dedicated patches in the farm. Some of it are also grown around the hotel area, theatre area, and the volunteer village area. Yaowawit has even turned it into various health products, such as hand cream, balm, soap, repellent, and tea.
The processes of making these lemongrass products can be tricky because they require not only manual skills but also various materials and equipment. So far, the process of making lemongrass tea is the simplest one, compared to making other lemongrass products, because it requires fewer equipment and finishes in three hours or so. Because of that, we often use lemongrass tea making to teach the students how to process lemongrass from raw plants into edible tea brews.
The first steps of tea making is outdoor when the students select healthy stalks of lemongrass, tie them into bunches, and cut the bunches at a certain length at the roots as not to damage the whole plant. Then the bunches are rinsed with clean water and cleaned up from any dirt. The cleaned bunches are dried and chopped into small slices. Furthermore, these small slices are then crushed into smaller pieces, which then can be either roasted or put in the sun until their colour turns to dark brown. At this stage, the lemongrass flavour can be smelled or tasted from the brews. The health benefits from drinking lemongrass tea regularly are many, for instance good for digestion, internal detoxing, normalizing blood pressure, boosting metabolism, and helping skin quickly heal from abrasions.
Yaowawit’s farm is a good place to grow lemongrass in a large scale. If you are interested in investing in our lemongrass large-scale production, please contact us at info@yaowawit.org. And you can also review our current lemongrass products on www.TradeForEducation.com.
Today was Mother’s Day throughout Thailand. As it had been for decades, the event was dedicated to Queen Sirikit The Queen Mother of Thailand, the mother of the current king. Yaowawit’s children also celebrated it for Queen Sirikit.
The children and their teachers paid their respect by lighting candles and presenting ritual offerings before the queen’s portrait and emblems, which our highschool students decorated the day before. Furthermore, the children also wrote well-wishing expressions on slips of paper, which were then placed on the wall especially decorated for the event.
The whole event was organized by highschool students. And in line with the Mother’s Day spirit, they also volunteered to clean up the basement kitchen, cook Thai papaya salads for lunch, and pick fruit (mostly papayas) from the trees around the school area. The activity was also an opportunity for highschool students to act as a role model for the younger students.
Twelve travel writers from Phuket-based travel magazines and agencies visited Yaowawit to survey our school, farm, and lodge.
After a warm welcome by the children and school’s staff, they took a tour around the school and farm as part of our introduction session.
Later in the afternoon, after attending a workshop in lemongrass tea making, the guests went back to the farm to pick fruits (this time, only mangosteens) and to inspect the garden projects at different parts of the farm. Afterward, some of them played football with the children, and some others hung out at the swimming pool. And that evening, they joined a welcome party in which the children performed traditional dances.
The next day, they visited a local market in Kapong and were also shown how to make a Thai dessert at a local family shop, which is one of Yaowawit’s local partners.
If you want to visit Yaowawit individually or in a group, please contact us at info@yaowawit.org. We have various activities from permaculture workshops to camping in the farm, which is a green area surrounded by valleys filled with rainforest.
Occasionally, highschool students have many things to do on Sundays. This Sunday they were tasked with decorating the theatre area for an upcoming event, ASEAN & Academic Day. This assignment helped them work with one another in separate groups.
One group decorated the stage and the stage wall in line with the context of multiculturalism and science teaching. Another group planned the positions of the seats, audiences, and walkways in the theater hall. And another group that relied on internet research was the robot group, who cut cardboard boxes to build a cardboard robot that a younger student could put on.
These activities encouraged highschool students to be more creative, more productive with their free time, and more social not only among themselves but also among younger students.
Kolping has been our long-time partner. In addition to sending us various groups of students who stay for two weeks or so in our programmes, it also sends us its outstanding volunteers who stay and work with us on a year-long basis. This time, we welcomed four Kolping volunteers from Germany.
Kru Marie
After graduating a high school, she wanted to live in Thailand and experience a Thai culture. Kolping selected her for Yaowawit, where she has now been assigned for work in the farm’s greenhouse and gardens along with various teaching activities in the kindergartens. After her time at Yaowawit, she plans to continue her education at a university in Germany.
Kru Jan
After finishing a high school, he wants to visit as many countries as he can before going to a university. Very pleased that Kolping placed him at Yaowawit in Thailand, here he can explore nice places in the region popular in Europe as a tourist destination. Since his arrival, he has been to all the waterfalls, a hot spring, a local market, a live-music pub, and the beaches reachable by scooter from Yaowawit. Soon, he will visit more places. At Yaowawit, he mainly works in the farm but also involves in various English teaching activities for the children. In the future, he plans to be a mechanical engineer.
Kru Anna
She wanted to help the children in Asia one day, after completing high school. When Kolping selected her to be a volunteer teacher at Yaowawit, she was very grateful. She is now assigned to various teaching activities in Grades 2, 4, 5, and 6 along with cooking and hospitality classes. After Yaowawit, she plans to go to university, but has no idea yet which subject she wants to study.
Kru Lina
She is interested in living and helping children in a foreign country, preferably in Asia, where she can experience a culture totally different from hers. When Kolping selected her for Thailand, she was so excited about it. Now she is at Yaowawit being involved in various teaching activities in Grades 2, 3, 4, and 5, and assisting hospitality classes. She also keeps herself open-minded to learning new experiences from the children. In the future, she would like to go to university but has no decision yet what subject she would like to study there.
The teachers and many of the children who got involved in the event dressed in various national dresses that represented several countries in Asia, especially the countries in ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations), an EU-like economic block. Thailand, one of the ASEAN pioneers, often promoted ASEAN values in schools across the country. In turn, Yaowawit also embraced the values not only because Yaowawit is in Thailand but also because several of Yaowawit’s teachers and staff are from different countries in ASEAN.
Besides appreciating multiculturalism, another ASEAN value most relevant for Yaowawit is using English as an official language of communication. With that spirit in mind, the children performed various dances, whose origins were in different ASEAN countries, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, and Myanmar, among others. And the songs for dancing were in different local languages mixed with their English version. Other children’s activities included drawing flags of ASEAN countries, competing for the best wrappers of an egg (that was, wrapping an egg with paper into a bundle and dropping it from a height of 5 meters. The wrapper that could keep an egg intact after a drop wins), and guessing weights of items like basketballs, footballs, and packs of milk.
Then the event presented a cardboard robot that the highschool students built a few days earlier. The robot walked the school principal for a speech at the podium. And afterward, the audience took a guess as who was inside the robot. The rest of the event was a fashion show by students whose nicely designed dresses made of recyclable waste materials. The teachers also joined the fashion show to promote multiculturalism as their dresses represented traditional dresses from different countries. Accompanied by songs, the children enjoyed the event as they loudly cheered and applauded.
During the school terms, the children often celebrate various events. If you are interested in joining any of the events, please contact us at info@yaowawit.org.
