While Prem students enjoyed summer holidays, Traidhos Visiting School Program, Barge Program, and Camp Program were working with international guests. Here we highlight the program enjoyed by a group of teenagers from America, working with VSP.

The Travel for Teens group is a regular Summer visitor to campus. This year we welcomed two cohorts of teenagers. The first group consisted of three boys and seven girls from many countries such as Portico, Dominican Republic, Canada, and America.

Last year they built a dormitory for twenty-four hill tribe girls and this summer the Travel for Teens community service project returned to the same community to build a 5 x 12-meter canteen building.  This was no easy task; first, the students had to fill the 60 sq.-meter floor with dirt about 4 inches thick all around. The first group did a lot of dirt digging but luckily the dorm kids, who finished early from school, helped out which made the work go a lot faster. ­­­They all worked well and got along with one another and didn’t seem to mind the hard labour despite dealing with jetlag! On the second and third day, they learned how to build the surrounding walls and then render as well. It rained a lot during those days, which was welcomed because it cooled down the work environment.  The first group managed to finish filling the floor with dirt and build walls with the help of the local hill tribe kids.  Most were satisfied and surprised that they were able to build such a thing and were excited to be doing it for a good cause.

The second group of Travel for Teens consisted of one boy and ten girls all from America. This group had quite a tough job as well, as they needed to cement the flooring about 3-4 inches thick.  Mixing cement was quite an intense, hard manual labour job.  They needed to mix the cement with lots and lots of sand and rocks.  Even though it was hard work, the students continued to work throughout the hot day, taking water breaks and taking turns at mixing cement.    They mixed cement to create the floor for three days.  On the last day, they finished up the flooring and wrote their group name with rocks in the wet cement floor.  Everyone was proud and felt great that they finished the project on time.  All were exhausted and ready to do some adventure activity in northern Thailand.
The project cost was raised by Travel for Teens prior to the trip – around THB 100,000. After another successful community service project, they are looking forward to supporting this community again next year.
Robert, VSP