1-18-11

We took a different bike route with less traffic today, bumpy and dusty, but more direct and safer. I now wear a mask to minimize the dust. We were expecting to be on our own, but still had escorts, very sweet for our families to be concerned. My family actually ate dinner with me tonight, something I had been unsuccessful accomplishing previously. I felt bad, because we ate at the table for my benefit and they usually eat on the floor. Heart, the little boy, left the table pretty quickly and sat in front of the TV to finish dinner.
My job description is CBOD (Community Based Organizational Development). It is starting to make sense as we are looking at tools and hearing about past projects. CBODs job is to integrate into a community and help them assess issues, look at options to address those issues, and develop and implement a plan. The Thai government’s focus is local sustainability so there is a lot of local leadership surveying the village population and developing action plans to increase local economic viability. The 2008 economic crash we are all too familiar with hit Thailand very hard. The local emphasis is one tool to combat those types of global issues. It would be like a CA city experiencing budget cuts would engage the local population to start providing some services government could no longer afford. Very communal and very Thai. Our PC group is # 123, the next group will be the last with our job descriptions (the other being TCCO – the teacher training project). No one seems to know the future direction of PC Thailand