Email 3 Thailand January 27, 2000

January 27,2000

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We finished teaching our first week of classes, and continued our interviewing of the Earth Rights School students as well.

We spent 3 days teaching a basic fundraising class and two days teaching a basic photography class. Both were excellent. At the end of each class the students evaluated the class and us, and we both felt very honored to receive high marks for how we were accepted and liked and for how much the students learned.

The students were a group of six members of SAPOWA, a newly formed Burmese refugee organization based here in Chiang Mai whose mission is to “protect and preserve the environmental and human rights of Shan people in the Shan State in Burma”. (We are stating the mission of SAPOWA because with our help, these 6 people were able to develop it over two days and nights. They still want to refine it more, but we are proud, and they are happy!)

The classes were held at the Earth Rights School about 35 kilometers north of Chiang Mai in a small village. The school is composed of several buildings on a “mini campus” with lots of trees, beautiful flowers and bushes, bamboo, coconut palms, banana trees, etc. It is very beautiful, peaceful and quiet, and because of the high need for security to protect the students, it is a perfect place. The gate is always locked, day and night. Our SAPOWA group was also very much concerned about security, but it was an uneventful week from that point of view.

We were driven to the school each day by the ERI driver, a 23 year old man who is also a Burmese refugee who attends college at night.

The actual classroom is a sort of covered veranda, very pleasant, but quite hot in the afternoons. Each day we brought treats for the group: doughnuts, fruit, sticky rice, etc. We bought the goodies at our favorite breakfast restaurant, it is a little outdoor place with a husband and wife team owning it. They do not speak english and we are not fluent in Thai so we could not explain what we did with all those treats and they couldn’t ask. They must think we eat a lot. The students loved the treats and we all ate lunch together, (sitting on the floor at a very low table). The students cooked and the meals were simple and good. The students were very thoughtful and when they heard Peter was a diabetic and I had high blood pressure they began to cook special dishes for Peter without sugar and without salt for me. Slowly we are learning to eat more and more spicy foods. The menu was Burmese rather than Thai, but the spices are just as hot in any case.

For the first three days, we taught basic fundraising. The students learned about several different ways to raise funds besides grant writing, and as a result some seeds have been planted with SAPOWA to raise discretionary money. SAPOWA was able to develop a useable mission statement, and as a group, the class developed a proposal which they plan to send to a small foundation in Australia to fund a project which they want to pursue as an organization. We developed a reality based budget, goals, and realistic activities and strategies. They felt very positive about creating the proposal as a group and learning how to achieve consensus on points and issues that there were different opinions about. They also saw how important a group can be in generating new and different ideas.

The last two days were spent in learning basic photography. Before coming to Thailand we raised enough money to purchase 7 cameras and 50 rolls of film. The cameras are durable, water resistant and have a number of useable features which people can use to document basic environmental and human rights abuses. We will use the cameras to teach all of the classes and then leave them with ERI. (We also brought two donated, but good laptop computers which ERI will use, and this is being typed on one of them!)

We taught the students how a camera operates, about various types of light and the different qualities of light, about different types of film and how they can be used to help the photographer, basic composition, how to photograph people, landscapes, documents, how to use flash, and how not to use flash, (in Burma, using flash may be dangerous). Enough time was spent on how to use the cameras that we brought with us so that the students felt comfortable handling them. Everyone was very excited about being able to actually photograph.

After the classroom session, the students were given film and a camera, and after using up the roll, we took the exposed film to Chiang Mai and had it developed. The next morning, we gave the prints back to the students. (They couldn’t wait to see their pictures which were quite good by the way). We used their prints to show them how well they did in some cases, and to teach them why certain prints could have been different and better. It was an excellent session, and we felt they learned a lot. Then we gave the students more film, and they went to photograph again using the information they had learned from the critique of their first roll and additional information from more teaching.

It was finally time to leave late Friday afternoon, and we all wished each other well. We have to tell you that we, (Peter) felt a little let down that the students were leaving – however they will be back on February 6^th for another class in non profit structure and management. We’ll tell you all about how that will go afterwards.

Attached is a photo of Peter teaching the students photography. We do not want to show their faces, and could only show you three students so as to avoid the faces of the others. Also a photo of Hinda preparing material for the fundraising class.