Core competency, job skills for rural Thai youth

With your gifts to date and monthly commitments, we have over 70% of the first-year's budget in place. We are moving forward. The equipment has been selected and our first teacher identified,  The English curriculum is being tested with a weekly Facebook class.  Our survey of students is underway.  Our local computer and network technician is ordering the computers and planning the network expansion.

The English class has attracted young people looking for jobs.  The teacher is a young woman who has a degree as a science teacher from a major university in Chiang Mai. Through her work at the local vocational-technical college, she realized how few resources are available to young people to build the right skills and find jobs that suit them.  Her goal is to develop an application to help students identify the skills they need for the jobs they want and match them to employers.

In the meantime, we tested one of the soft skills programs with 20 of our students at Warm Heart.  With the success of Girlrising.org's gender-neutral "Explore More"  program, we plan to use it as part of the "soft" skills development program. The Explore More program helps youths build their self-confidence, by forming goals, increase self-awareness and improve peer interactions and life planning.

Thank you for making this possible!  

Warm regards from the team at Warm Heart!

Thanks to all your support, we have the finds to get the project underway.  While we are still finalizing the project plan, we expect to have the equipment,  curriculum, teachers, and students in place for a pilot in Q1.

We are starting with surveys of businesses to confirm what skills are lacking in the current youth populace.  The photo of the zigsaw puzzle is the survey format created by our staff. they have started with local businesses and will continue in the city of Chiang Mai.

We have been setting up partnerships with curriculum developers for English, soft skills, and both coding and hospitality specialties.

1. Soft skills: We will use programs with a proven track record. For example, Girlsrising.org. This is a program for both boys and girls to build self-esteem and set personal goals. This is a program taught by mentors at our site.
2. English - TEFL-based English program for Thai students to supplement their core studies.
3. Hospitality – working with the Dusit Hotels University, we have access to online core skills training and English for hospitality.
4. Coding - Build out the program developed by Steven Devos and supplement with Code.org and CodeAcademy.

In addition, we have offers of assistance from volunteers from major tech companies that have experience building vocational training programs for youth.

We are excited about the development of this valuable project and again thank you for being a part of making this happen.