Thailand
Focus: Community Development
Location: Mae Kachan, Chiang Rai Province
Dates: May 24 - June 20, 2009
Languages: English and Thai
Housing: Cabbages and Condoms Resort and Homestays
General Applicants Program Fee: $5,100;
Northeastern Univ. Applicants: All tuition & fees covered by summer tuition.
General Application: $35 Deposit Due at Enroll: $500
Notes: Two
meals daily, airfare, housing, airport transfers, entrances, emergency
medical evacuation, and course fees. Not included: personal basic
medical insurance and personal expenses while in country.
Admissions: Online
If you are not afraid of rolling your sleeves up and getting your hands dirty, eating food you can’t pronounce and waking up to night sounds you can’t identify, Global PACT Thailand is for you. This Activist Training Program is not for the faint of heart or the "for-credit" tourist. There will be no clubs and no dancing till dawn. You will not spend your down time baking on the beach or shopping for silks and cheap electronics. Global PACT Thailand is a “full-contact” cross-cultural program in development. Accommodations are provided at a resort dedicated to stopping the AIDS epidemic in Thailand. Participants walk through rice paddies to interview farmers about their needs, listen to mothers talk about their dreams for their children's futures, dress and behave in keeping with local customs.
On the way home, students spend two days in Bangkok to see the temples, the klongs and night life, but for the duration of the program we will be in Mae Kachan, a small, rural town in Northern Thailand. Here a third of the population lives below the official poverty rate of 50 cents a day, and many children leave sixth grade for work in distant cities as sweatshop workers or prostitutes. Away from the urban centers of Thailand, participants will also be far from concerns about Thai politics. Far from the glitzy, westernized tourist centers, we will have ample opportunity to observe the ravages of Burma’s distant civil war, environmental plunder and poverty, as well as the work of the international humanitarian community.
