Thailand and Southeast Asia Regional Office

Thai Volunteer Service (TVS)

A New Generation of Volunteers

by Naurin Ahmad-Zaki

For Dej Pomkacha, Sirinun Nenthong and Prakart Reungdit, the last day in March is a long working day. From early morning till late in the evening, they are busy interviewing young people between 20 and 30 years of age from all over Thailand, who are interested in joining the regular volunteer programme of the Thai Volunteer Service (TVS), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Bangkok. Dej Pomkacha and his young team are expecting quite a number of interested young people from which they will choose a class of 22 persons who will be trained in the next two years to become ‘regular volunteers’.

``It is the right and duty of every citizen and all the sectors of society to participate in social development. This volunteer programme is a service and support offered by TVS to other Thai NGOs with the aim of training a new generation of volunteers,´´ explains Sirinun Nenthong from the volunteer section of TVS, ``we were established in 1980 and this year we are going to graduate the 20th batch of regular volunteers.´´

Before the young class of volunteers is selected, TVS inquires from NGOs from all over the country as to how many volunteers they need in any particular year. This year 14 NGOs have expressed the desire to take on volunteers. These NGOs are usually involved in social development activities such as human rights, environmental issues, women’s rights and sustainable agriculture.

After the selection of the trainees by a panel comprising workers from the NGOs and TVS, an initial five-day warm-up training session is conducted by experts in which the young trainees are given an idea as to what their work as a volunteer is going to be like and what is required in order to be successful. During this session, the trainees are also taken to the slum areas of Bangkok where they are taught how to collect community data, draw maps and are briefed on techniques of report-writing.

After this initial session, the young volunteers are sent to the respective areas where their NGOs are working. Here they spend the next 45 days living and working inside the communities. The young volunteers, who are mostly fresh university graduates with degrees in community development under their belts, receive a monthly allowance for the period of training, 40 per cent of which is paid by TVS and 60 per cent by the NGO.

After 45 days, the volunteers meet with experts in a second training meeting to share their experiences, as well as to discuss the problems they encountered while working in the field. Also present during this meeting are co-ordinators from the various NGOs. The trainees are at that stage not able to analyse the problems of the communities, however, for the meeting each volunteer prepares a report and with the help of TVS staff and guest trainers learns about the root causes, the origin and the solution for the communities’ problems. Equipped with this newly acquired knowledge, the volunteers go back to their chosen communities where they spent the next three months before meeting once again at TVS. As in the meeting before and the various meetings during the next two years, which are held on a regular basis at TVS, the young volunteers learn more about the aims and objectives of their work. The subjects and methodology in each session change according to the level of advancement of the volunteers. In the first session the volunteers are familiarised with the development concept of the NGO. At the next meeting, they are taught how to organise meetings in the villages and how to handle group discussions.

For the final meeting, the volunteers present reports on the past two years in front of a panel of experts, who give them an evaluation and make suggestions on how to improve their techniques. ``It is important for us, that the freshly trained ‘young volunteer’ is conveyed the feeling that what he has done in the past two years is beneficial for the community - it isn’t the report, but primarily the work he has done, that matters,´´ says Prakart Reungdit, head of the volunteer section of TVS.

Alongside the training programme for young volunteers, TVS also conducts training sessions for ‘special volunteers’. These trainees are local village people, often community leaders, who are already working with a particular NGO which might not have the resources to pay them and thus ask TVS for help. ``Each year we financially support around ten to fifteen special volunteers. We also try to train them in the ‘hot issue’ of that particular NGO,´´ explains Sirinun, `` for instance, ‘The Forum of the Poor’ an alliance of different organisations and NGOs of the north-eastern provinces of Thailand regularly request us to recruit their counterpart community leaders as specific volunteers.´´

In order to bring the concept of social development to as many people as possible, TVS has started a radio programme which is aired once a week in Bangkok and once in the north-east in Burinam province. ``We would like to extend our radio programmes and would like to reach audiences in the north, in Chiangmai, because we feel that radio is a very good medium to initiate a public debate on critical and relevant issues,´´ explains Sirinun Nenthong.

TVS also participates in programmes in universities and colleges, which are similar to the young volunteer programme of TVS. Often volunteers from the universities are sent to work in government departments as part of their training. TVS helps in funding these students, especially in the research area.

Often university and college students want to conduct activities relevant to social development, but they need help with resources. TVS thus helps in funding these students and occasionally lets the volunteer staff join in its activities. In the research area, TVS cooperates with the Office of the National Culture Commission, a government organisation, in conducting research on youth volunteers and in Personal Management training for NGOs.

Additionally, TVS is carrying on projects on the Promotion of  Rural Industries funded by the Department of Industrial Promotion and People Organisations on the Mae Klong River Basin supported by the Ministry of Public Health. This cooperation with the government on several fronts shows TVS’ committment to working for the betterment of Thai society.

In order to work towards self-reliance and to finance its own training programmes, TVS has initiated a programme called the Responsible Ecological Social Tour Project, a development exposure trip for various agencies both within and outside Thailand. Educational packaged tours are organised to various regions of the country. Since the economic recession and the manifold political problems in Thailand escalated, widespread discontent has been aired by the population through demonstrations and protest in the media. For TVS and many like-minded NGOs this is a perfect time to take up and discuss the current ‘hot issues’ like Thailand’s loans from the World Bank and IMF and the government’s policies. TVS feels that results can only be achieved if there is co-operation and co-ordination in the NGO movement and firmly believes that through endurance, persistence and effective work methods, the NGOs in Thailand can make a difference. To maintain and strengthen this bond between the various NGOs, TVS believes it is crucial to maintain close links with development mechanisms inside and outside the country ranging from government to individuals

And however many changes have occurred since the 1980s in the structure of TVS‘ work, whether in policy advocacy or in political involvement, the original spirit of volunteering has never waned. Social activists and NGO workers making an effort in the mainstream of globalisation are explicitly the result of grassroots development, in which TVS strongly serves in human resource development and building volunteer spirit.