In my previous posts, I highlighted organizations that put on events for youth in Thailand, focusing either on education or leadership skills. These events are wonderful and fit excellently into the Thai culture and concept of sanuk.
Yet, these events require a lot of people power to make a difference here – from the planning to the coordinating to the volunteering to the facilitating. The Books for Thailand Foundation is a bit simpler than that, but makes just as much of an impact.
What Books for Thailand Does
The Books for Thailand Foundation was founded in 1968 and with the support of various corporate sponsors provides English language books from U.S. and Canadian publishers to schools and libraries, free of charge. Each year they donate 50,000 new books to over 550 schools from around the country. All one has to do is bring a letter of request down to their warehouse and you can walk out with all the books you can carry.
Books for Thailand is always excited to support Peace Corps Volunteers and in fact, made an appearance at our Mid Service Conference and gifted all of us with our own box of books to take back to site.
What makes this organization so special is that worthwhile English books are difficult to come by in the rural areas that Peace Corps volunteers are located, let alone any books, even in Thai.
English Literacy in Thailand
While Thailand boasts an official literacy rate of 94 percent, it has been my personal experience in the rural areas that this may be a high estimate or that the standard for literacy may not be very stringent. As a result, creating a literacy rich environment – something that was a big part of my AmeriCorps service – can prove to be quite a struggle here in Thailand. Many of the older adults who are left caring for the children who attend these rural schools may not be literate themselves.
It’s definitely a struggle as a volunteer, to see what sometimes feels like a sinking boat with so many holes and wanting to plug as many of them up as you can, but organizations that provide the resources at low- or no-cost make that struggle a bit easier.
I had heard from other volunteers, who recently made a trip to the offices in Bangkok to get books, that there will likely be another shipment coming in December or January, and so I am making plans to make a trip myself to help expand the English language section at my school’s library and to help make my co-teacher’s English classroom a literacy rich environment.