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Entries in Community Service (4)
Annual Community Service Project
Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 6:18PM 
Every February I, and another three faculty members from the Internatonal School Bangkok, organize a community service project during a Global Citizens Week. This year we took 34 high school students to Baan Rachawadee School to restore and paint school rooms and facilities.
We buy high quality materials and spend the time and effort to pepare the suraces to insure a "15-year paint job."
Annual Community Service Project in the Bangkok Slums
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 5:55PM 
Every year I take a group of high school students from the International School Bangkok into the slums of Klong Toey in Bangkok, Thailand to carry out a community service project for the Mercy Center Foundation.
This year we worked with 3-5 year-old pre-school and kidergarteners.
It was a visually, as well as culturally, interesting place.
About the only safe way out of the cycle of poverty in this part of Bangkok is to commit to education. Liking school becomes a necessity.
This school is organized as an intervention in the "Eldest Daughter Syndrome," where the oldest daughter quits school at 9 or 10 years of age to take care of the younger children and becomes enmeshed in the cycle of poverty herself. By providing day schooling for young children, the older girls can finish school and move out of the slum.
The school is not without resources, thanks to Father Joe and the Mercy Center Foundation.
We brought large boxes of art materials and lesson plans for fun projects.
The kids ere very enthralled with the art projects.
Some students showed very good art skills.
We shared our hope with the young art students.
There were many different activities to choose from.
The kids were eager to help.
Art is not easy.
Sometimes an artist just needs to think.
In addition to providing a school, materials, and teachers, the mercy Center, through its donors, also provide vitamin fortified milk and a health lunch so the childrens' physical development is assured.
The kids loved that milk.
The school suddenly became very quiet when the milk was handed out.
Not every day is a good day.
At the end of the school day mothers, relaties, or neighbors would fetch the children. This mother brought an especially observant baby.
Making Merit in Saraburi Province
Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 7:24PM 
The entrance to the temple grounds was a thing of beauty filled with spiritual promise.
My wife (Yoo), brother-in-law (Vichai), and niece (Par) and I went to Saraburi province today to make merit.
We participated in ceremonies and left donations.
There was much beauty everywhere we went. The smell of incense filled the air.
It was a day reflecting on what the Buddha said: wake up.
Who designs these cave temples? Fantastic!
The entrance to the underground temple.
One can partake of Chinese numerology cards in the underground temple.
The underground temple had some wonderful Buddhas.
It was cool inside the cave.
It is such a surprise to find Buddas in a cave.
The cave extended quite a distance under the cliff.
Down and around we went.
It seemed around every turn a new Buddha grotto could be found.
Someone is tending all of these subterranean altars.
Yes. The someone is a "cave hermit" and this is an alter to him.
This is the only underground Chedi I have ever seen . . . . and I have been in many underground and cave Buddhist temples.
Some of the Buddha altars were quite spooky.
Even though it was a hot day, fan sales were slow in the temple courtyard.
As this was a special day for worshiping, merchants set up a makeshift markets outside the temple gates.
Beans, lentils, and split peas are in season.
There is nothing like Thai Chinese Temple Roastin' Ears (TCTRE) on a 100 degree day. Trust me.
The most moving part of the day was passing out alms to the aged indigent poor of the area. It was humbling and heart-rendering.
Dr. Jeff Harper
Last Saturday's trip to Saraburi with my family included several Buddhist Temples (wats), both Thai and Chinese/Thai. Here are a few more images from that wonderful day.
Our first temple of the day was a Thai Buddhist Wat that had a stone Buddha "footprint." Pilgrims would set money on the "footprint" for good luck. The room had a mirrored ceiling. Great idea.
Another temple building had Buddhas that you "dressed" in sashes and gold leaf. I dressed one and was thrilled in the process.
Fantastical dressed Buddhas.
I couldn't choose between these three dressed Buddha photos, so I included all three here.
The temple buildings were beautiful and . . . .
. . . opulent beyond belief.
The largest Wat structure held the largest Buddha.
The extensive Temple grounds had many traditional Thai wat structures.
The third temple of the day was a traditional Chinese Buddhist Temple . . of austere beauty.
Beautiful spiritual architecture.
All the elements for a spiritual pilgrimage were present.
The interior of the Chinese temple was thick with incense and mystery.
Altars within the temples speak of timelessness.
Not everything one finds in a temple is positive. This man sets birds free, for a fee. You give him money so you can have the good feeling, and added good gamma of freeing a bird. Gamma ascription can be a complex thing, but this is simple: it is wrong. Unfortunately this practice leads to the netting and trapping of birds which inevitably leads to the killing of many birds in the process. I told this guy to go away. He didn't like me telling him that.
Community Service Project
Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 2:47PM During the past five days Alan Morton and I took 32 high school students from the International School Bangkok (ISB), as a part of their Global Citizens Week, into a poor neighborhood of Bangkok to do a community service project. The project involved painting a pre-school for poor children as a part of the Human Development Foundation's (Mercy Center) poverty reduction efforts in Thailand. A number of years ago a large conference (coincidentally in Bangkok) met and determined that the very best "development dollar" was the dollar used to "keep a girl in school through the 6th grade," the consequence of which was lowered poverty, disease, infant mortality, and the lessening of the "cycle of poverty." In Bangkok, Father Joe Maier, an old Height Ashbury Hippy (like myself) who founded the Human Development Fooundation (HDF), realized the issue related to keeping poor girls in school longer was the "eldest daughter syndrome" -- a situation where young girls drop out of school to take care of still younger siblings while their single mother is out earning money to support the family -- and therefore become trapped themselves in the "cycle of poverty." The pre-school we painted represents a way to keep "older" girls in schools by taking care of the young children while the older girls are in school. Our painting will help maintain the infrastructure of this useful and successful program. This is the 17th such HDF school Alan Morton and the ISB students have painted for Father Joe over the past 14 yeas in Bangkok.
The hard working students sanded, scraped, and cleaned all the surfaces in prepartation for painting.
Once the surface preparation was competed, the paint was applied.
The school cooks supplied us with delicious Thai food for lunch.
We prepared and painted one half of the one-room school while the the students were in the other half of the school -- then switched sides. The 107 students of this school were very happy with the brightness and cleanness of their "New School."
It was a very big job, made harder by the complexity of painting the slatted walls in the heat and humidity of Bangkok. But, as they say, many hands made light work!
Our student painters came from 10 different countries.
This child was very curious about what was happening on the other side of her classroom!
We used sweet pastel colors to make the "Nursery School" look like a nursery school.
The finished school looked great . . . and will be protected from the elements for at least 10 years.
As always, I couldn't help myself from taking photos of amazing images.
What is it about corrugated tin roofing that evokes the image of Poverty? The view from the school kitchen.
