My name is Muay or Gail. I’m 19 years old. I was a volunteer for 10 months in Service Civique program, which is supported by the French government. The organization that I worked with is Solidarite Jeunesses in their delegation called REV in the south of France, about half an hour from Nimes. 

It was my first time going to Europe for a long time. In the beginning, I was worried about a lot of things. For example, new culture, people, language. But finally, I decided to go because I want to grow up and discover a lot of new things and experience.

About the work, there were 3 types of work.

• Local animation, Local animation is the actions or activities that we did with local people because in the project we try to link, communicate and live with local people. For example, we did English classes for kids and adults in the village. We organized many events like international dinner, the aims of this event are taking with villagers, sharing our culture and to present our project to the villagers. We also join the local activity for example, I join the French local theatre. And we have a second-hand shop, the place where volunteers can meet and talk with villagers.
• Chantier (the French word for working place), we planted a lot of trees to help farmer solve the problem of flamingo eating the rice. We also checked the hiking spot, if the way is still ok or the sign is not broken. And gardening as well.
• Training, I joined 3 training. 2 with SJ about diversity, racism and discrimination and 1 with the red cross. All these trainings teach me a lot and change the way I see things and people.  

In the volunteer house, we live with volunteers from many countries. For me, in the beginning, it was very hard to adapt and understand the culture because it was so different from my culture. It took time to learn but from this difficulty, I had learned how to open mind and accept something different.

From these 10 months, I had learned a lot of things and discover a lot of new things, I experience happy moments, I meet nice people, Also I face difficult situations and having difficulty with some people. So I grow up a lot, my world becomes bigger and diverse. This volunteering was a big chance and big change too. It was a hard year, happy year, and changing year to become a better person and growing up.

DaLaa is a strong and beautiful flower from Southern Thailand which can pop up and blossom everywhere around. It is usually pink but can be white or red variety as well. Moreover, it can be eaten in “kao yam” salad and cooked with other dishes too. It has a strong taste. Would you like to try it?

DaLaa organization was founded in 2004. Our birthday is October 20^th, at the date we gathered for our first workcamp/seminar. Most of us having had good experience in international volunteering, and believing in its value for our society, we followed our dream to create our own volunteer organization, starting from nothing but friendship.

We wanted to support initiatives, especially for the people (and children) living in the countryside of Thailand, for example the villages some of us come from. We wished that volunteers from Thailand and from all over the world to work together with the local people. In this way we hope to create more friendships and understanding between each other. Also by doing voluntary work, people get a good experience in working out of their heart, sharing and learning other ways of doing things, speaking English, learning Thai and having fun together.

We organized few workcamps (2 weeks each) in 2005, mainly in partnership with local schools, always happy to welcome foreign volunteers.

In 2006 and 2007, workcamps were becoming more regular, we organized other kinds of projects like agriculture, environment, renovating schools and we could pay a small salary for one of us.

Then in 2008, we took a bigger step. We started to experience with Middle and Long Term Volunteers and we were getting quite a lot volunteers in our workcamps. With the money saved, we could start to grow up with 4 paid staff, working in a real office and had a full time workcamp leader. It is this year that we got officially registered as an association.

Since beginning of 2011, we are focusing on a few MLTV placements; the workcamps are often held in MLTV sites to support their activities or to get into contacts with new communities.

DaLaa relies on the local knowledge and wisdom. We are well aware of the local needs and challenges.

Little by little, we could create a strong network thanks to powerful hosts and communities.

In 2016, we moved our office from Hatyai city to the countryside, and nowadays we are trying to build our own community on the side of our office work, we call it VSC, Voluntary Servcie Center/Community. It’s the open gate for new interested people to become volunteer.

Let’s break the barriers and fears in ourselves, let’s support authenticity, let the human be, let the nature be, let’s become responsible and autonomous, the path toward freedom, let’s join and support these network of active communities working for social growth and environment preservation. Let’s be part of it. Let’s include the good will people we meet on the road.

Let’s join hands to create the world in peace we all deserve.

Work camp experience from Jinwoo from South Korea