In December 2018, with the support of the Endowed Mission Fund, Professionals Without Borders (PWOB) collaborated with the Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability (CEJS) Director, Dr. Phillip Thompson and the Seattle University student chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW).
The Ban Khunjae School currently has 99 students, and 5 teachers. The school principal explained to us if they had 21 more students they would meet the 120 student mark which the government requires to have 11 teachers assigned to the school.
PWOB was scheduled to visit the school located in the village of Khun Jae, in Phrao district, Chiang Mai province. Our purpose was to review existing conditions at the school and determine if Professionals Without Borders could feasibly send a volunteer service team along with providing some financial support to build a new building. The school was in need of a building that would serve as both a teacher’s meeting room, and a school library. The plan was to build a 20’ X 40’ 800 sq. ft. building with storage underneath, with living space separated into two rooms and a common outside porch. The estimated cost is $20,000 USD. We were also to assess the potential of assisting in building two separate small residence buildings with bathrooms for student use. These rooms would house additional students to meet the government requirement for student occupancy to teacher ratio.
We had the good fortune to talk with Joni and Nangsar Moore to discuss several other Thailand projects they are promoting.
They have worked extensively over several decades in this region. Some of their efforts have been getting water to most of the villages using PVC pipes to pipe in mountain stream water to the villages. Joni and Nangsar helped to build three health clinics on this mountain range. Each clinic which is run by the government serves a cluster of roughly 12 villages. Over the years they have worked closely with the Royal Project to help implement various development projects designed to improve the health and livelihood of the people, along with many other service efforts.
PWOB was able to contribute $5,000 dollars to the new building effort. With the seed funding in place, Phil Thompson worked with the local Rotary Club and was able to leverage the $5,000 into the needed $20,000 for the school.
