Education and Training Year Review

 As the Christmas holidays are drawing near, we want to take a couple of moments to reflect on some of the highlights of 2012 for us at UEC and the TESOL Institute. In brief summary, our TESOL and TEFL courses have been well frequented, with more graduates joining the Buffalo State, State University of New York Master degree program, UEC has again been providing more international school professional development sessions this year, Thai schools have been requesting English language lessons for their English and general teaching population from UEC as well as been calling repeatedly for UEC to send our best 120 hour TESOL course graduates as teachers.

A number of new outreach projects were started this year, some bearing success and others still a while from completion, yet exciting nevertheless.

As our end of year celebration, we had the great pleasure and honor to have Thai Airways sponsor the second annual Christmas caroling by the Fatima Good Shepherd Sisters Girls Choir. This year, a group of Thai Airways engineers from the Flight Simulator Department invited the 26 carolers, ranging in age from 4 to 17, to take a 15 minute simulator flight to Hong Kong and Zurich, Switzerland on the simulator flight deck at the THAI Headquarters.

In The Air Bus Cockpit The children were amazed by the ever changing scenery outside of the flight deck windows, and the holiday spirit reached an all time high once snow started falling on the approach to Zurich! Members of the Training and Language Innovations Department reiterated to the children the need for furthering their studies, so they could one day apply for work at THAI Airways, or similar top tier international companies.

UEC has been providing free English lessons at the Good Shepherd Sisters Fatima Center for the last eight years, and we are excited to open to our young learners the world we work in with corporate English classes at THAI Airways. A special and heartfelt thanks to our colleagues in the THAI Language Training Department and our friends in the Simulator Training Department for making this very special day happen for the children.

The Karen Village Project

Ever since our first trip to the Karen refugee village in a Thai military restricted area outside of the large UN refugee camp on the Thai Burmese border, we realized that education needs in the village of approximately 600 were secondary to more basic needs of nutrition, ample and clean drinking water and Malaria protection. In an area largely deforested from illegal logging, few opportunities remain for honest and worthwhile employment

Poor Thai Burmese Child

On one of our initial walks through the stilt house community, we came upon a single mother of twins. Both little girls had a traditional Karen herbal tincture on their heads in the mother’s hopes to fight the diarrhea and worms both eight month olds had been suffering from for more than a month already. The mother had been subsisting on approximately 15 U$, (500 Thai Baht) per month and had been trying to deal with her two undernourished infants, with the nearest medical attention being a 45 minute motorcycle ride away, which cost an unaffordable 15U$, if a willing motorcyclist could actually be found in this remote village.

At the time, we took the three to the nearest medical clinic in Mae Ramat, bought supplies and infant formula to substitute the boiled rice water and insufficient amount of breast milk they had been receiving.

The children and mother are doing well and have gained sufficient age appropriate weight (pictures), and based on our initial efforts, the village community is open to our other community improvement efforts. We are thankful to have working with us and volunteering their time and efforts a number of marvelous people who just happened to hear about the story and joined our efforts.

Rural Mother and Twin Babies

As always, none of our educational efforts could be possible without our steady number of TESOL and TEFL course participants, and it is the time to express our very heartfelt appreciation to all of you who have taken our 120 hour TEFL course over the years and supported our efforts in that way.

Education and Training in 2013

For 2013, we are looking to engage the villagers in the weaving and manufacturing of traditional Karen cloth, an art which otherwise is slowly disappearing from the village, with only two women of the 200 remembering the traditional patterns and weaving techniques.

Our other community outreach endeavors include connecting with Thai universities to look at vocational training opportunities, basic training on hygiene and basic medical attention.

We have a lot of reasons to be thankful for, as this was certainly an eventful year, and we do wish all our friends, colleagues, graduates and readers a safe, healthy, happy and fulfilling holiday season and great start into the new year of 2013!

Sawadee Pee Mai!