Yaowawit needs to replace the body of a school truck. The current body is wobbled, the floor is decayed, and the iron structure is rusty. As such, those parts can be unsafe for our students when sitting on the truck to go to school or other places for school activities.

To replace the body of the truck, we need 2900 euros. This funding will replace the iron structure, shades, seats, floor, and roof of the truck’s body.

Safe transportation is crucial for our students who depend on the school truck to go to various places necessary for their school activities and reach the destinations on time. Safe, comfortable, and reliable transportation will enable the students to enjoy the trips and focus on their school activities—instead of worrying whether the school truck will harm them on the road.

To support the project, go to this link: https://goto.gg/45746

Thank you for your generous support. It will make our children safe and comfortable on their school trips.

This time, Labdoo sent Yaowawit another four laptops along with some WiFi routers and accessories. Labdoo has been our partner for many years, and its laptops have given our kids quick access to the internet, with which they can do online research anywhere at the school because laptops are portable. Thus, access to various subjects pertaining to school lessons and extracurricular activities is now just a few clicks away.

Although Yaowawit encourages the kids to use computers as much as they need to so that they get familiar with the technology early in their career, Yaowawit however does impose strict supervision especially during school hours. Aside from that, teachers sometimes use laptops in classrooms to help show the kids visual demonstrations of the lessons being taught.

If you have unused laptops gathering dust at home, please donate them to us. If you’re in Thailand, contact us directly. But if you’re abroad, please contact Labdoo (at https://www.labdoo.org/content/contact-labdoo) and mention Yaowawit as your intended receiver. We can put your laptops into good use for our kids.

In this graduation season, three of our high school students managed to graduate successfully and have been admitted into their chosen universities. Through Yaowawit, they have expressed many heartfelt thanks to all the sponsors, supporters, donors, partners, teachers, and friends who have guided and given them the opportunity for life-skills education that enables them to be where they’re today. Once their university education is done, they hope to use the skills and knowledge to contribute to their family and community as they then have the capacity to break the cycle of poverty into which they were born. Below are their brief profiles.

Pakgard had lived at Yaowawit for over 12 years, after being admitted into Yaowawit as a child when she was in kindergarten grade 3. She completed her primary school at Yaowawit and then continued her high school education at Kapongpittayakom School, while she lived and boarded at Yaowawit. Therefore, she got the opportunity to do life-skills training in English and hospitality in various activities. After graduating her high school with an excellent academic record, she was admitted into Phuket Rajabhat University. Majoring in Tourism Management, she is looking forward to studying the subject and developing her skills and practical knowledge in it within the next four years. Whenever she gets a chance, she promises to come back to Yaowawit because Phuket isn’t far from Yaowawit. Then she would like to talk with younger students on how to succeed in school based on her experience.

Fluk joined Yaowawit when he was in primary school grade 5, and after completing his primary school, he continued to live and board at Yaowawit as he was studying at Kapongpittayakom high school. Like Pakgard, Fluk often got involved in various life-skills training activities including in mentoring younger students at Yaowawit. Also graduated with an excellent academic record, Fluk found it easy to get admitted into his dream university, which is Songkhla Rajabhat University. There he chose to major in Human Resources because the subject gives him skills and knowledge to talk with people in order to figure out their potential in a professional context. Although he likes to come back to Yaowawit as often as he can, it’ll be tough for him though because Songkhla is 6 hours away by car from Yaowawit.

Om became a Yaowawit’s student when she was already in high school grade 1. She lived and boarded at Yaowawit while going to Kapongpittayakom. However, when she completed high school grade 3 (equivalent to completing a junior high school year), she won a tuition free scholarship to Phang Nga Vocational School specializing in hospitality management. As she had to live on campus during her study, Yaowawit supported her living expenses including housing in the student dormitory. She also graduated with an excellent academic record, and thus could gain a successful entry into Prince of Songkla University, Surat Thani, where she majors in Tourism Business Management. Since her first life-skills training in hospitality at Yaowawit, she has developed an interest in the business side of hospitality. Now with this new opportunity at the university, she intends to study it in depth.

The risk is real. The kids need to know it straight from their teachers so that they can take actions either to prevent the coronavirus spread or to protect themselves from any potential risk around them. Thus, their teachers gave them a whole-day Covid-19 class along with hands-on practices they could do themselves.

After the kids got to know how Covid-19 occurred and spread all over the world, they then worked in groups to present their own show-and-tell sessions using the materials they had jotted down during the class. In addition to that, they practiced on how to correctly wash their hands with disinfectant soap. And the last stage of the class was making face masks by themselves using the materials their teachers had already prepared.

The masks would go with the kids when they took a long school holiday a few days later. Most importantly, Yaowawit requested that the kids remember the class when they’re out there so that they’re safe when they return to school in May.

Previously planned for today was a graduation day for primary school students, who move up from one grade to another higher grade. But the event was cancelled due to the risk of Covid-19 spread. The cancellation was supported by the Thai ministry of education who had ordered all schools closed two days earlier.

Consequently, the school holiday could begin right away. Many guardians came to pick up the children. Some were grandmothers. Some were single parents. And others were relatives registered at Yaowawit as children’s guardians.

As the children were going away for the next months, they had been equipped with the knowledge and practical solution on how to prevent themselves from getting infected with Covid-19. The other day (18 March), the kids learned how to clean their hands correctly and how to wear a face mask when going out to public places.

By remembering those two points, the children should be able to enjoy their holiday as normal as it should be.

The farm was used to be on its own—run and managed by its own staff. But it has now been merged into one teamwork and run by everyone—not only by the farm staff and the kids as it used to be but also by the management staff and the teachers along with the volunteers. The goal is to distribute responsibility, highlighting that the farm belongs with the team, and the team has to take care of it. This new responsibility pleases the team greatly, because most team members who used to live in cities had chosen to live in a woody village like the valley around Yaowawit as they dream of starting up their own gardens one day. Well, that dream arrives this month because Yaowawit now encourages all its team members to start up their own gardens on the farm.

The work began today and will last for weeks to come until the crops can be harvested. Led by the school director, the first round of the work is cleaning up the areas (around the school and the hotel and on the farm) where new patches of land can then be plowed, watered, and processed so that they’re ready for planting crops, which will be done later in the second round. The crops selection will also be underway as the team need to study the soil characteristics at those separate areas, the benefits of the crops, and the harvest time that the selected crops will take to yield, among other crucial things regarding large-scale gardening.

Most important is that the kids can now see for themselves that gardening skills are economically strategic in self-sustaining a community like Yaowawit. Healthy living requires healthy meals every single day. The ingredients of those meals mostly come from a farm. Done well, a large farm like Yaowawit’s farm will be able to not only feed a community but also make profit out of it, because our farm can be a bustling resource for healthy living.