International Global Citizen's Award
encouraging young people to become better global citizens
The English Academy, Kuwait - Award trip to Thailand
A group of ten students and two teachers from The English Academy took a trip to Phuket, Thailand, at the end of January 2009. This group was an amalgamation of Gold International Award and International Global Citizenship Award students, some participants in both awards. The purpose of the trip was to volunteer our time at The Jumpstart Center, run by The Asia Center Foundation in Phuket, and help them paint and furnish their facility. We were also able to take advantage of the partnership with our another IGC award school, The British International School in Phuket, who were generous in providing us with accommodation and helping us feel at home. Our goal in organizing this journey was to expose our Award participants to new cultures and ways of life.
The Jumpstart Center is a pre-school whose purpose is to provide young Burmese refugees with some basic education and care. The Center is home to thirty children between the ages of 3 and 12. On the date of our arrival, the Center had been open for a few months and was still lacking some very important decorations and furniture. Prior to our trip, the participating students made huge efforts to raise money from the rest of the student body at The English Academy. Due to the group’s drive and motivation we left for Thailand financially and creatively ready to help out at The Jumpstart Center.
Our main focus was to decorate the walls of the Center. Appropriate murals and characters were picked and designed for each room by pre-assigned groups. Three days were spent washing walls, outlining pictures, painting and painting again. On one of the days, students from The British International School in Phuket joined us and helped with the project. It was hard work but the results were magnificent. Our students learned so many lessons in the process; how to create plans, compromise, delegate and most importantly how to be proud of themselves. With the money left over after buying painting supplies, The Jumpstart Center was provided with a class set of desks and chairs, furniture for their reading room including bookshelves, carpets and bean bags, storage for toys and resources as well as a washing machine. The hard work that was put into this project by all the students involved was paid back the moment the children who attend the pre-school entered the building on our last day.
After spending three tough days at work, we spent the last in the Center with the Burmese children. When we arrived in the morning, most of the children were already waiting for us on the main floor of the building. They greeted us with a show, exhibiting some of the things they had learned during their days at school. We were sung songs, told stories and recited the alphabet in English and Thai. Following this presentation, the students were brought upstairs and shown the new decorations. The emotional reaction of the children to their new surroundings was overwhelming. They were shouting and jumping and some were gently touching the painted characters, wondering if they were real and how they had come to be. The children were very excited about their new reading room and spent a lot of time trying out their new bean bags and cushions. The surprise was not over though. Our Award participants had one more thing planned. On one of the walls, the trunk of a tree had been painted and they used the hands of every child at the pre-school to create the leaves of the tree. One by one, each small child was able to pick the color with which to paint their hands and gently transfer their handprint onto the wall. This last activity was a success, creating an everlasting testimony of our life-changing experience with them.
The Asia Center Foundation provided some of the Award participants with a special opportunity. A few of us were taken on a private tour through the slums where the Center’s students live. Our walk through the homes built on stilts, above a garbage dump, along with the evidence of extreme poverty everywhere around us deeply affected the group. This provided our students with a new perspective on life. Most of them will now talk openly about a new found appreciation for their current living situation.
Upon our return to the Jumpstart Center we prepared to leave. It was obvious, as an onlooker and a participant in this project, that this would be a difficult goodbye. Our students had created a bond with these small children and were looking sad by our eminent departure. It wasn’t until we were all sitting in our ‘songtaeow’ waving goodbyes and sending thanks that some of our grown students started to cry. I was surprised and yet touched at their emotional reactions to this day. This was one trip these students or us teachers would never forget.
Katrin Bizier
IGCA Coordinator
The Jumpstart Center is a pre-school whose purpose is to provide young Burmese refugees with some basic education and care. The Center is home to thirty children between the ages of 3 and 12. On the date of our arrival, the Center had been open for a few months and was still lacking some very important decorations and furniture. Prior to our trip, the participating students made huge efforts to raise money from the rest of the student body at The English Academy. Due to the group’s drive and motivation we left for Thailand financially and creatively ready to help out at The Jumpstart Center.
Our main focus was to decorate the walls of the Center. Appropriate murals and characters were picked and designed for each room by pre-assigned groups. Three days were spent washing walls, outlining pictures, painting and painting again. On one of the days, students from The British International School in Phuket joined us and helped with the project. It was hard work but the results were magnificent. Our students learned so many lessons in the process; how to create plans, compromise, delegate and most importantly how to be proud of themselves. With the money left over after buying painting supplies, The Jumpstart Center was provided with a class set of desks and chairs, furniture for their reading room including bookshelves, carpets and bean bags, storage for toys and resources as well as a washing machine. The hard work that was put into this project by all the students involved was paid back the moment the children who attend the pre-school entered the building on our last day.
After spending three tough days at work, we spent the last in the Center with the Burmese children. When we arrived in the morning, most of the children were already waiting for us on the main floor of the building. They greeted us with a show, exhibiting some of the things they had learned during their days at school. We were sung songs, told stories and recited the alphabet in English and Thai. Following this presentation, the students were brought upstairs and shown the new decorations. The emotional reaction of the children to their new surroundings was overwhelming. They were shouting and jumping and some were gently touching the painted characters, wondering if they were real and how they had come to be. The children were very excited about their new reading room and spent a lot of time trying out their new bean bags and cushions. The surprise was not over though. Our Award participants had one more thing planned. On one of the walls, the trunk of a tree had been painted and they used the hands of every child at the pre-school to create the leaves of the tree. One by one, each small child was able to pick the color with which to paint their hands and gently transfer their handprint onto the wall. This last activity was a success, creating an everlasting testimony of our life-changing experience with them.
The Asia Center Foundation provided some of the Award participants with a special opportunity. A few of us were taken on a private tour through the slums where the Center’s students live. Our walk through the homes built on stilts, above a garbage dump, along with the evidence of extreme poverty everywhere around us deeply affected the group. This provided our students with a new perspective on life. Most of them will now talk openly about a new found appreciation for their current living situation.
Upon our return to the Jumpstart Center we prepared to leave. It was obvious, as an onlooker and a participant in this project, that this would be a difficult goodbye. Our students had created a bond with these small children and were looking sad by our eminent departure. It wasn’t until we were all sitting in our ‘songtaeow’ waving goodbyes and sending thanks that some of our grown students started to cry. I was surprised and yet touched at their emotional reactions to this day. This was one trip these students or us teachers would never forget.
Katrin Bizier
IGCA Coordinator
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