Core Competency: job skills for rural Thai youth

As we start a new school term after the longan fruit harvest, we are looking beyond Phrao for the students in need of our Upskills Program. 

Through our benefactor, Spencer Leung, we will share a location on the outskirts of Chiang Mai to help disadvantaged youth learn core competency job skills and career possibilities. Spencer has been working with our staff to encourage small entrepreneurial projects to expand their skills and raise money to support them and Warm Heart over time. 

The location is just south of the city, near small villages as well as farmland leading up into the mountains.  The space is rented from a friend who has a vegetable processing operation on a small farm and makes biochar from macadamia nut shells with a Warm Heart retort.

Spencer has been introducing basic business knowledge and coaching to our staff to bring their ideas to fruition.  The space in Hang Dong will be a learning center as well as a staging location for our biochar products. There is a restaurant space that can be used for a classroom and a "Peace Cafe".  Land is available to grow test crops and run training sessions. 

Finn will shift his English and Upskills base of operation to this new site.  He can take on trainees in the cafe as well as attract youth who are unemployed or underemployed to improve their core job competency. As other programs develop, he can provide the job prep needed for success in finding and keeping satisfying jobs. 

One of the programs in the planning stage is scholarships for Certified Nurses Aides (CNA). This is a certification from the Thai National Nursing Association and gives its graduates access to hospital and care facility positions.  The connections through the McCormick Hospital nursing faculty that Usar Suragarn and Soda have been nurturing for the Access to Care Program will help us extend our care to elders in additional communities.

We recently celebrated our 16th Anniversary with a "Sweet Sixteen" party, spotlighting our graduates.  Mali, our Children's Home Manager put out the word to our network of Warm Heart graduates.  We had 14 graduates join us.  They came from the mountains, Europe, and around Chiang Mai - in person or in short videos (see below for the link to our 16th Anniversary Celebration web page of videos and photos.) They all spoke of the skills they had learned at Warm Heart, including the coaching for career planning and essential skills for interviewing and succeeding in jobs they like.

Thank you for your enduring support of this program. These are key skills in the current economic environment.

Best wishes for the months ahead.

Dana, Michael, Evelind, and the Warm Heart Team

Links:

• Sweet Sixteen Celebration - Graduates, Programs and Joy

The new school year starts in mid-May, just as the smokey haze is clearing and the hot temperatures are coming down.  Finn has been running some classes in Phrao at a cafe with local shopkeepers and artists.  We are gearing up to settle the schedule for classes in the community and at Warm Heart. 

Finn, and our volunteer, Geoff (a retired English as a Second Language teacher from Canada) ran a workshop for Communications Skills and English in February that led to another one in March.  Some of the students asked to continue English classes with Geoff and Finn. Geoff's teaching style adapts to the individual students and encourages them to have fun and lose their shyness when conversing in English. 

Our Warm Heart Board member, Maisha, (visiting for a few weeks) helped to review the programs and joined the March workshop to meet the students.  She was amazed at how well the students were speaking English and they proudly credited Geoff and Finn for their rapid progress. We are looking at leveraging their positive reviews and extending the offering.  

We have teamed up with a Peace Corps volunteer, assigned to our neighboring Mae Wan sub-district.  She teaches life skills and English in a neighboring middle school.  We plan to join her in the after-school English club where she is teaching in Phrao.  This will catch students just before high school and give them a head start on using their English. 

This week our Warm Heart students return to start the new school year.  We will run a two-day English camp to get them working together and ease them back into learning mode.  We will continue weekly sessions with Finn and Geoff in the evenings, arranging them in groups according to age and ability.  These classes get them to practice English and think about their personal goals and self-awareness.

Thank you for supporting this program as we make headway on various paths, aiming forward, but sometimes taking a step back to reassess.

Best wishes for a wonderful summer. 

Dana, Evelind Michael and the Upskills team