One of the neat things about being a Peace Corps volunteer is that we know a large number of people in pretty much every corner of the country, and the work that each of us does sometimes requires more facilitators than are available at our site. This means that sometimes, we call on other volunteers to come to our site and lend a helping hand at a large event that we have going on, and we get to spend some time together and show off our sites to each other.
Such was the case for me last week, as my colleague Michael e-mailed asking for help with a biking event in his community in the province Nong Bua Lamphu. Michael is a Youth in Development volunteer, so he works with through the local government office and with the secondary school in his community to help develop leadership and good citizenship skills among preteens and early adolescents. His counterpart and community are extremely supportive of him and his work and he has a lot of projects going on, one of which was the establishment of a bike club in his community with secondary students as leaders and facilitators and primary students as participants. One of the goals of his counterpart is to make his community a biking community.
This was the third bike event that Michael has helped organize, with the previous two being rides along a set route with stops for fun activities along the way. The second one was planned entirely by the student council from the secondary school and from what Michael said, the event was not as successful as it could have been. So this time around, they wanted to have the Peace Corps volunteers lead most of the activities so that they could watch and learn more effective facilitation techniques.
In the preparations and advertising for the event, Michael got sign-ups from around 100 primary students who were interested in participating. He planned a route that, unlike the other events, went to a single destination for the activities and then returned back and he planned and prepared one activity and then left the rest of the schedule open for the group of volunteers to brainstorm and decide on once we saw the actual number of participants.
After a delicious taco dinner the night before, we woke up and headed to the starting point on our bikes to find close to 60 students waiting to go and already wearing their event shirts. After some opening remarks from the VIPs and us introducing ourselves, we all set off on the 18 km route to a nearby national park. We stopped along the way for some rice porridge for breakfast. The last little bit before getting to the park is a fairly steep hill, that many students with their single speed bikes walked up, but I saw some push their way all the way to the top, which was very impressive.
After hydrating and resting for a bit, Michael gave the instructions to the group for the activity that he had prepared, which would also buy us some time to decide on activities for the rest of the time at the park. He had previously taken pictures of places in the park and then hid puzzle pieces at each of the eight places. The students, in eight groups were to go to the place, find the puzzle pieces bring them back and then, “as a team create one image.”
The catch was that all of the eight individual puzzles came together to make one single image, so when each of the eight groups were done with the pieces they had found on their own and we told them that they weren’t finished yet, and to listen carefully to the directions it inspired some of those critical thinking skills that most Thai students don’t get to practice very often. The students were able to figure out the meaning of the directions and a quick debrief of the activity discussed with the students the idea that we are all each other’s team and that you don’t always realize who could be a potential teammate.
While the students were working their way through this activity we decided on a couple of other activities that have become staples among some of the Youth in Development volunteers’ repertoires: Rock-Paper-Scissors Evolution, Human Knot and Ninja. We decided to try and go in an order that would alternate thinking activities with more fun activities. In all, the activities were a pretty big hit with the kids, based on their faces and the laughing over all. Once we got through the activities, lunch was served. We had planned to try and do a little bit of English instruction, with directions to practice on the ride back, but the kids took off before we got a chance to regroup for that. Mai bpen rai, no worries! We just followed them off, bombing down the hill to start off on our way back home.
It was nice to spend the afternoon then, just relaxing with some other volunteers, playing basketball, tossing a football and playing card games and Michael delivered with a second delicious dinner of grilled cheeses and french fries. It was a really wonderful weekend and an awesome opportunity to see how the other program that is in Thailand operates and kind of inspires some ideas for secondary projects for me in my community. Stay tuned for a video in the next couple weeks to see a bit of what the day was like.