Curriculum Project in Mae Sot
Zoe Matthews reports about her experiene along the Thai/Burma border working with an organization that works to train teachers and create teaching materials that are relevant to learners in preparing them for in communitiy organizations and further educational training.
What am I doing? Why do I feel like I’m really not helping and rather being more like a 5th wheel? I quit my job to volunteer for a year and after only 6 months working in Burmese migrant issues in Bangkok I was already asking these questions. Time and time again, I found myself being asked to perform tasks that, just because I’m an English native speaker and fresh from teaching English at a well-reputed university in Thailand, I’m expected to magically be capable of doing with hardly any experience or training. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t very good at the jobs and was spending far too much time on trying to educate myself. With the money in the bank fast-depleting, I soon discovered that it wasn’t that I’d chosen the wrong field to volunteer in, it was just that in my haste to find every way I could to help, I was being swept in a direction that I did not really want to be swept in. Plus, all the organizational politics I was encountering was starting to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. Time to regroup.
It was then that I came across the Curriculum Project and thanks to an encouraging nudge from a good friend in the industry, I arrived in the northwestern border town of Mae Sot. In all honesty, I was still disillusioned because of my previous volunteering experiences, and I was ready to pack my bags if things started to go the same way again, despite all the good things I had heard about the organization. I was happily and gratefully disarmed by what I found.
Instead of being bamboozled left, right and centre, by things I had to do by yesterday, I was gently led into the world of CP and its Mae Sot circle, and all the basic necessities of my new life there were quickly attended to. As if it had been preordained, I instantly knew where and how I could help and how I could apply my skills. The urgency with which I had to get on with things was there of course, but instead of being pushed off the plank with a wooden stick, I found myself breaking into a sprint and hurdling into the tasks at hand.
CP provides all the opportunities for those seeking to really understand the dynamics of the situation on the Thai/Burma border and to help ease the plight of the thousands that cross it every day. The number of schools for migrants, exiles, and refugees from Burma that it provides services to is staggering considering the size of the organization (it consists of only 8 local members of staff) and it seemed somehow amazing to me that this beautiful, bustling machine would have such a relaxed working environment. School visits, teacher training workshops and organizational meetings were valuable insights into the success of its strategies and the number and range of lives that CP touches. In my three months with Curriculum Project, I finally felt like I was doing my bit and it was entirely rewarding being a part, if only for a short while, of such a professional team and such a worthwhile movement.
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