As the days go on we learn more and more about the ways the Mirror Art Group helps the surrounding communities and how our roles as volunteers contribute.
The Mirror Art Group operates several projects; Hilltribe Project, ICT, Citizenship Project, Anti-Human Trafficking, second hand shop, hilltribe craft store, Mirror Art Guesthouse, and Hilltribe school education.
The Hilltribe Project consists of a group of adults whose main objectives are to help the various hilltribes adjust to life in the modern world while still preserving their cultures and beliefs.
The ICT group, similar to IT in the States, is responsible for maintaining the ebannok website. Not only do they provide technical support, they also design both Thai and English websites.
While all of Mirror’s projects are important, the Citizenship Project is probably considered the most influential. When the borders were redrawn between Thailand and Burma (now called Myanmar), the people who suddenly found themselves in a new country did not have any claim to citizenship, and their previous citizenship was void. Unfortunately this meant these people were not eligible for any benefits provided by either government; mainly healthcare and education. These non-citizens can’t even travel to cities such as Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai, because border patrol stops along the way check all Thai passengers for citizenship cards, while Farangs (literal translation means white westerners) are not even looked at. The process for obtaining citizenship is complicated and requires a lot of paperwork – this is where Mirror comes in. Mirror’s goal is to get at least one family member citizenship because the law states that if one member of a family gains citizenship, any blood relatives will be included as well, as long as the family can afford to pay for blood tests to confirm relationship, but sadly most have a hard time affording such services.
Sadly there is a heavy presence of human-trafficking in Thailand. The anti-human trafficking members work to prevent hilltribe women and children from being kidnapped, shipped to other cities or countries, and then forced to work for no pay. The older women are usually forced into the sex industry or sometimes into the restaurant and housekeeping industries. Children are pushed on the streets to beg for money. Mirror stresses to never give money to begging children, no matter how much they look like they need it because it is only supporting this unfortunate industry. They have done observation studies and found that at the end of the day the begging children are forced to relinquish their earnings to the gang or kidnapper. If you are going to give something to a child, the best thing would be food, although even that might get taken or the child may refuse it all together.
The second hand and hilltribe craft store bring not only support the foundation, but also the community. As you probably guessed, the second hand store sells clothes to local hilltribe people. Many of the hilltribes have a traditional dress but many are started to dress in more modern clothes because of social pressures. Often new, modern clothes are too expensive. The second hand shop give the hilltribe members the opportunity to buy the clothes they want at a reduced rate. The ebannok store sells local handicrafts and gives the money back to the designer. Majority of sales come from online sales to other stores for resale. Volunteers are asked to use our contacts to connect the ebannok store to other store owners. The items available in the store are truly beautiful!
Recently Mirror opened a guesthouse in Chiang Rai, uniquely named the Mirror Art Guesthouse. We usually stay at the guesthouse on Friday evenings. We both love the guesthouse because it is always clean, has a hot shower, and most importantly 10% of the fees go back to the Mirror Art Group, or back into the community. How cool is that? We haven't found a better guesthouse in Chiang Rai yet!
Lastly, Mirror has a heavy presence in the Hilltribe education system in Chiang Rai,. The Hilltribe schools are somewhat primitive, but seem better than the ones in Belize. Mirror has found that the best thing we can do for them is teaching them English because it will help them in the future. For the most part the children, ranging from three years old to sixth grade, seem as if they are eager to learn. Even though it may be more interesting to work with some of the other projects, the education program is generally where volunteers contribute the most. Most of the other projects are run by Thai speaking people, with volunteers just helping out where they can. Teaching English is what we are qualified to do, even if we have never taught before. We also take the time to tutor the ICT workers. Most of them speak fairly good English and know a lot of vocabulary, but English grammar and sentence structure are completely different from the Thai language. Most notable are the absence of articles, conjunctions, and other small connector words that English uses but Thai doesn’t. Words like “a”, “an”, “the”, “but”, etc. aren’t used in Thai and have no direct translation. This is why most people that speak relatively good English here still have a problem forming correct sentences. You can converse with these people and generally have not much trouble getting all points across or from them, but the flow isn’t there. Teaching these adults consists of having conversations with them and improving their skills, usually covering whatever topic the students want. Another group tutors the Hilltribe workers. This group has a lower speaking ability, so most of the time is spent learning new words along with basic grammar and sentence structure. One lesson we did was learning how the words get rearranged when asking questions, such as: “Your eyes are brown.” turns into “Are your eyes brown?” The last option for teaching English is tutoring Top Kids which is an after school program for the children living right around Mirror
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As we have said before, Mirror does so many amazing things for the Chiang Rai community. With meeting we learn about many of the success stories caused by the organization we are helping. Another intern was telling us that the Mirror Art Group was actually voted the best place to volunteer in Thailand. We are so lucky to be paired with them randomly. We would recommend this wonderful organization to anyone!
Best to you all,
Samantha and James
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