OpenmindProjects was nominated and invited to
attend the prestigious Stockholm Challenge in May. The Award is given for the
best use of Information and Communication Technology in development projects. The
Stockholm Challenge 2008 featured six categories for ICT for Development
projects. The best projects were invited to Stockholm, http://www.stockholmchallenge.se
. This is a great achievement for a small organisation largely comprised of
dedicated Thai staff we felt.
TT, Mui and Sven from
OpenmindProjects plus our dedicated volunteer
Ram went to attend the Stockholm Challenge in May, taking part in workshops,
conferences and study visits along with the other finalists from around the
world. We also invited and managed to fund the trip for the IT teacher, headmaster
of the Prathatvittaya temple school, Tharabon, to learn and get inspiration to
improve work at his school. Our TT felt that ‘attending the workshops, meeting
the other finalists was an incredible experience. I came away with lots of new
ideas and friends that will help me improve in what I do.’
AGala Dinner was held at the end of the week at
the Stockholm City Hall, the place where the annual
Gala Nobel Prize Dinner is held. A nice experience and delicious dinner
with other overseas visitors.
Following our invitation we were generously
sponsored to attend the Stockholm Challenge in Sweden by the Swedish technology
leader, Saab, www.saabgroup.com, the international
information security software company, Kaspersky Lab, www.kaspersky.com , the Krabi
Sriphong Phukaoluan Foundation, www.krabirelief.com
and even some of our volunteers, The
events were held at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, where
OpenmindProjects held an exhibition stand and participated in workshops with
attending organizations, NGOs from around the world. We promoted the use
of ICT in rural areas and made very nice friends and useful contacts.
OpenmindProjects was also
invited to the Thai Embassy for a reception with the ambassador, Dr. Apichart
Chinwanno, and Ms Chotikorn Limratana, first secretary, who had been very
helpful in finding a sponsor for us, and they were very impressed that we were
nominated and happy that we could come. We were kindly invited to attend a Thai
culture evening in June. TT and Ram had the opportunity and enjoyed Thai
culture in Stockholm!
OpenmindProjects
staff also travelled to other parts of Sweden, where we gave presentations
about our work and built more contacts. Our first stop was Sven’s sister’s
family and their Skansen like home outside of Stockholm, with some houses being several
hundred years old, and where moose and deer are common sights! The group was
also invited to well known Polish profile Jakub Swiecicki and his family. Sven
worked with him as a consultant in post communist Poland
and Russia
in the 1990s.
Molly, another of Sven’s sisters, who has volunteered with us twice, invited us to their summer
house north of Gothenburg, a first glance of the rocky Swedish west coast and
archipelago.
In Gothenburg, we were asked to make a
presentation about Openmindprojects and eco tourism to international master students
at the University and Business
School. And we met with
another of Sven’s friends, Jan Hallberg,
the deputy major of Gothenburg who has followed OpenmindProjects from its
start. We even managed to arrange a Thai dinner for our friends and supporters in
Gothenburg. A very nice evening apart from all the other dinners we were
invited to. It was especially nice to meet some of our young volunteers, like Ida, Kajsa, Lotta and more. Some of
us went sailing with Sven’s brother, visiting beautiful Marstrand and watching
seals. While in town young Swedish students celebrated their graduation with an
energy that surprised us all, driving around in big trucks shouting and singing
happily.
Sven was quite happy to see how our Thai staff
listened, watched and learnt from the whole trip, work and much ‘sanuk’, fun!
All in all, the trip was a great success, a very
nice experience and memory! Thank you again all supporters in Thailand, Sweden and elsewhere.
Posted to June 2008
06/21/2008
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1. This was your first trip to Sweden. What is your impression if
you
compare with Thailand, apart for colder?
- This was my first
trip to Europe, and before I departed I
had many ideas about Sweden,
and I hoped I would like cold.
- My first
impressions when I reached the Swedish airport were that there were few people,
and the weather was good: cold, but fresh air.
- The architecture
was beautiful. The old town was classic, and everything was in order.
- There was a lot
of high technology.
- The people were active.
- There was a lot
of public transportation (not traffic) and it was very convenient, modern and
clean.
- The driver was
considerate. He always stopped when saw people walking.
- All people seem
to be on the same social level between the city and the countryside and between
rich and poor. It is very different from Thailand where there are big differences.
2. Did you learn anything, special, get any ideas that
you would like
to realize back home?
- I would like to develop myself, to learn more and to improve
my English
- I
want to work hard, and to be happy to work. I believe
everyone can learn more.
- I want to improve everyday, not to be lazy,
and one day I will
be successful.
3. Volunteers learn about local culture
when they come to Thailand,
Laos, etc. what did you learn about Swedish culture?
- The eating
culture is very different from Thailand:
both the food and how to eat it.
- The Swedish language.
- I also learned about the Swedish way of life.
The Swedish people have more freedom. At night, I saw a teenage boy and girl
drinking, dancing, and kissing. Sven’s friend Carol told me it was normal.
4. What about the Stockholm challenge?
- It was good, but it should
have had more activities to learn
about the participants, and more workshops.
5. What did you learn there? What are you
special impressions,
memories?
- I learned about other
organizations, NGOs.
- I got some special
impressions of the Stockholm
City Hall,
an amazing place
Posted to June 2008
06/22/2008
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During three weeks I was
lucky to get a chance to stay in a village. My temporary home was one of the
teacher’s houses inBan Tha Dok Kham, a village near the Mekong
in Isan.
During the 4-hour bus trip
from Nong Khai, I hadn’t got a clue what to expect. The last four weeks I had
taught English at a school in Nong Khai. It was a great experience; the young
children were great; and teaching was really fun. The English teacher from Thailand and I
formed a good team. ‘Will my stay in the village also be a great experience?’ Soon
I found out it was.
Tepsak, the English teacher
from the high school in Tha Dok Kham waited for my at the bus stop. He wore the
same jacket as during his wedding day. I think this was a very special day for
him too. I was the first volunteer teaching in Tha Dok Kham, the first foreigner
– Farang – who stayed in the village. Most of the students had not spoken to a
foreigner before.
My first day at school was watching
some students play basketball. This was a contest between several schools. Our
boys and girls didn’t win, but they had a lot of fun. When there was some time
left, we visited the forest together with the girl team. They didn’t speak
English very well; neither did the two teachers I was with today. ‘Mai pen
rai’, no problem, we could communicate with a lot of smiles and some body
language. It was a good first day. At least these girls got to know me for just
a bit.
The days I taught were
great fun. There was a big difference between the children from Nong Khai and
the students from the village. The students from Tha Dok Kham had never heard a
foreigner speaking English. They knew some English words (though not many), but
they didn’t know the sound of it. To listen to my little stories was helping them
to get some feeling about the correct pronunciation. When I talked very, very
slow, used very simple words, body language and repeated it once more, some
students understood half of it. Others did not at all, but at least some of
them were more interested in learning English now and they had fun! And that
was just the first step they needed! A next volunteer can lead them to the next
step.
The teachers I stayed with
were very nice to me. They showed interest in me, gave me a very welcome and
warm feeling. And a lot of food!! Sometimes we had a little barbecue party,
together with all teachers and the director of the school. A very special
person, who is continue trying to motivate the students to come to school and
to learn. When you think about their backgrounds – their parents are poor
farmers without proper education – the importance of going to school and study
hard is not that understandable for them as it is for us.
In the weekend we visited
some nice places. One weekend Rung, one of the teachers, took me to her
village, where her father and her lovely 8-year son live. She goes there twice
a month or less, because it takes her more than 5 hours by car to get home.
Rung spoke just ‘nid noi Angkrit’, a little bit of English, but supplied with two
dictionaries, we could communicate. Yes,
sometimes it took more than half an hour to get her understand my simple
question, but I thought it was very brave of her to take a foreigner to her
home for a whole weekend. A lot of people who once learned some English (like
Rung) don’t want to speak English, because they’re afraid to make mistakes. Rung
and I had a great weekend.Sunday morning her father gave sticky rice to the
monks who did their alms round. That was a beautiful sight. Then we went to the
temple to listen to the prayers of the monks and to see the villagers walk
three times around the temple. Everybody smiled at me this special weekend,
some even touched my blond hairs on my arm and an old lady felt my waist. All
of them thought I was ‘sue’, beautiful and slender. In The Netherlands, I am
just as everyone else.
On another Saturday some
teachers took me to the Phulanka Mountains. More than
3.000 steps led us through a fantastic landscape and to a gold colored pagoda
(temple) on top of the mountain. For climbing the last part we needed a rope, which
was very adventurous! Near the pagoda was a huge footprint of Buddha. My
friends, all Buddhists, kneeled and bowed for it. The only sounds I heard were
coming from the birds and the little refreshing breeze. The atmosphere was so
serene. Again, I felt very lucky to have this experience.
The next day we visited
That Phanom, a beautiful temple complex 150 kilometers away. Like thousands of
other Isan people. This week was about Good Luck, so everybody wanted to offer
flowers, burn a candle or incense sticks. Some people put some thin gold layer
on one of the Buddha statues. My friends and I, as did all the other people,
walked three times around the temple. The smell of incense sticks, the sound of
the loud and intense music, all these offering families… To be here made an unforgettable
impression on me. During the ride back, we enjoyed listening to dreamy Isan
music and had lots of laughs.
There’s so much more to
say, so much more good and worth full experiences; I could write a book! Walking
at the lively markets where people sell fried rats and grasshoppers. Having a
pick nick near the Mekong
River, eating ants, cooking
with one the villagers, seeing a brand new mother recovering from giving birth…
Beautiful!
I will never forget the –
sometimes shy, but always sweet - smiles and hospitality of the teachers, villagers
and students. I will always remember the buffaloes walking to their piece of
grazing ground every morning, the special ceremony and (good) tears when saying
goodbye, the passion of Tepsak and the other teachers, not only to give their
students a good education, but also to help them in their process to become
good and honest adults.
I feel incredible happy to
have been there. It was an experience of a life time.
Renata Burger
The Netherlands
Posted to June 2008
06/23/2008
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Draft by Sven Mauleon
OpenmindProjects,
april 21, 2008
The illegal trade in wildlife, the more exotic, the more
attractive, is third to the illegal trade in arms and drugs, not a flattering
company. It’s big money with limited threats, much lower penalties than
smuggling drugs. And well off consumers in the West still like teak furniture,
and boat decks, new rich Russian don t
much care about pristine nature , conspicuous consumption is a must to show off
and the better off Chinese consumers now
demand even more exotic animals,
In Thailand
maybe a 50 000 baht fine, 1000 Euros or a year in prsion. To the big guy the
fine is peanuts like a tax, a nuisance but not more. Or maybe he pays official, police off, faster,
maybe cheaper and he can keep his illegal goods. The poor guy driving the car,
getting caught, may have to go to prison though since he may not have 50 000
but then again the big guy will find another poor guy for the next shipment.
In Sweden,
the new boat owner is proudly watching his shining boat deck, maybe origin Burma, maybe Thailand, legal? Maybe, probably
not. And IKEA cannot guarantee, know for sure, that the hardwood it uses is
legally logged, said the CEO in a BBC interview last year.
And in Japan
the sushi lover still eats blue fin tuna, and the Norwegian his whale meat.
And, and, and.
But, today very few fashion victims in the west would
consider wearing a fur coat made of ozelot, and if they did, they would son
regret it.
And if Swedish lawmakers can outlaw the trade in female meat
maybe lawmakers here and elsewhere could consider outlawing more of the trade
in endangered species.
The threat to wildlife is as much a local problem, a poverty
and an ‘unawareness’ problem. Poor people living in the countryside near nature
see it as a natural supplier of food and other means to make a living. Nearly every
national park, every wildlife sanctuary in Thailand suffers from encraochment,
illegal logging, poaching and quite often some local rangers are also involved.
As long as there is poverty, too small farms to sustain a family, and
unemployment, lack of skills required for better job opportunities elsewhere, as
long as these conditions exist the threat will remain.
But in countries like Sweden, the wildlife is coming back;
wolves and bears are sighted where nobody saw them before because very few are
over a hundred years old! That’s how long they have been gone! So why is wildlife
coming back? Maybe the rest of the world could learn, should listen? I think it s rather obvious!
Yes, laws have helped, reducing pesticides helped, national parks
have contributed, surely public opinion helped, and forced law makers to take
action. But probably, most of all, wildife is back because people have for the cities
and the better job opportunities there. There is more space today, out
there! And we all know people left for
the cities because that s where they had more opportunities and they could go
because they had the skills required to get a better job.
To save wildlife, we must reduce poverty, provide better job
opportunities and prepare the uneducated for these jobs but where you have many
poor, you have scarce resources to teach, to train, to prepare. And ICT can be
one of the saviors! My first mobile, some 20 years ago, cost my employer a
fortune, about 3000 Euros, and it was then!
Probably an Ericsson thank you! My latest, a Thai brand, cost me 90 and
it can do a lot more, play music, record, take pictures etc. and, of course,
reach many more!
This is how OpenmindProjects was conceived. If ICT is
constantly improving and prices reduced while the quantity and quality of
teachers and other teaching tools in less developed nations are not, then ICT
can be the poor man’s best help. If only the student should access ICT, want to
and learn to use it, they could learn to learn more and depend less on
teachers! We tried this in the early
2000’s and now we use ICT in al our projects, national parks, schools,
villages, orphan homes etc
Some strategies and remedies to save wildlife and
hardwood and how ICT can help
1.Reduce supply
·
Tougher laws, stricter enforcement of laws,
heavier penalties, pursuing the big guys, just like in the fight against drugs.
Reducing corruption. How? Public onion pressing politicians. More resources,
·
Better surveillance. How? More people, better training, better
equipment, not only weapons but ICT, like Trail Guard, a way to detect poachers with weapons in the jungle, like the
meal detectors at the airports sending signals via satellite to the too few
rangers telling them where to find the
e poachers.
·
We find ideas like
these on the Internet and spread them to others to use.
·
Make makers of furniture, like IKEA, stop using
hardwood, and boat builders stop making teak decks. Public opinion, pressing politicians.
·
We can contribute; spread
the message with our community, face book, volunteers.
·
Reduce the supply of cheap labor, the poachers, and
the loggers
·
Reduce the local threat to wildlife. Prepare and Train people for better
opportunities and for a better life. –
prepare young people for better job opportunities elsewhere, jobs in the
cities, through education, like what
happened in Sweden.
·
We support schools and other institutions with ideas, and volunteers; how
to use ICT in education, how to improve the use of ICT in education, learning
English, the lingua franca of ICT, we hold
workshops wit teachers, send volunteers
to schools etc.
·
And we can help this generation, to better jobs
too. Some into community based and sustainable
eco tourism.
·
We work with villages
and national parks to train people to be hosts and guides. We create promotion
material and websites, etc.
2.Reduce
demand
- Laws against buying?
- Creating
awareness, education. Hopefully our volunteers
rerun home with a more acute awareness of what’s going on, what s
happening, what happened to nature in SE Asia and why, and how we the affluent are guilty too.
- And
these volunteers met us on the
Internet
- Public opinion! Today very few fashion victims
in the west would consider wearing a fur coat made of ozelot, and if they
did, they would soon regret it. So change public opinion elsewhere too.
Make the Chinese feel ashamed of eating exotic animals to increase their
libido or cure cancer. Make the Japanese feel ashamed of eating whale and
blue fin tuna. Make people ashamed
of buying hard wood furniture. We contribute too, with our
community, Newsletters, face book, volunteers
Plus ngt
kontroversiellt, kritiskt, som skapar
uppmarksamhet, kanske
Posted to June 2008
06/24/2008
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Some reflections by Sven
Some 15 years ago I worked in Eastern
Europe as a consultant to help industries, in post communist
societies, adapt to a market society. We could clearly see the costs of communist
mismanagement, to people, to nature. When we suggested closing coal mines,
local politicians, old style, objected, telling us that they, the mines, contribute
a large % to the GNP.
But they did not tell is that the mines also contribute very
much to pollution, bad health, increased health care costs, ruined nature etc.
The old guard, communists, went on to criticize western consultants for wanting
to reduce economic growth in their countries.
But is it only old style communists?
Think about it!
Western politicians, financial analysts, stock brokers, preach the same
gospel. Environmental damage, the costs of using, abusing nature are not
accounted for in the GNP measures for economic growth. And the value of
pristine nature does not show up in the balance sheets of wealth as does an
asset like the logged hardwood used in a building!
So all measures to stimulate growth basically still ignore
the real costs of nature destruction, pollution, extinction of animal species
etc. because , today’s capitalists and yesterday communists fail and failed to
understand how to set a price on protected ,preserved nature.
Instead leaders sing the praise of the uninhibited market
economy as the best creator of ‘wealth’.
The fact is the unrestrained market economy is just as
divorced from the realities of global warming, enviromental destruction as were
the communists. It is time economists and politicians face reality, it is time
financial analysts, stock brokers accept that their short term advice to
investors is based on short term greed and flawed arguments.
How do the lyrics go?
‘When will they ever learn?’……………..
Posted to June 2008
06/25/2008
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