In the Mae Hong Son area there are a large amount of ethnical minorities including Shan and Karen.
Many of these ethnic groups are refugees from Burma and the pressure is augmenting after the recent violence.
Travel to Teach works in and supports an orphanage set up by a Burmese/Shan man. There are 45 kids aged between 7 and 15, almost all from Burma and ethnically Shan. Volunteers also do some community work and we set up our own groups for teaching English.
What our volunteers do:
One English class 3 days a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) in a local Thai school where most of the children attend – the orphanage manager has set this up to help the school and also the local Thai community.
Three nights a week volunteers hold a conversational English class for college Tourism students (some Burmese and some Thai). They have been studying Tourism and English for four years, but have never had to speak it so it´s heaps of fun.Volunteers do role plays etc and we can see their confidence and their spoken English improving. This is going to hugely help them with employment opportunities when they graduate.
Volunteers that have a drivers license, can pick the kids up from school each day. If there is time and enough volunteers we organize that we go and play with them for an hour after school.
In the weekends, volunteers play with kids. They just really need some friends and some love, and they are starving for affection. There are three staff at the home, but they have to do all the cooking etc, so the kids don´t really get the kind of attention they need.
If volunteers wants to take time off Mae Hong Son is a beautiful town in fantastic surroundings with trekking, rafting, bird watcching etc possibilitiesin abundance.
This placement demands a bit more of our volunteer but gives so much more in return.
Program Fees and Information:
Prices are available for any period between 2 weeks and 6 months.
Length of stay - Euro
4 weeks - € 550
8 weeks - € 750
12 weeks - € 950
24 weeks - € 1430
Additional weeks € 40/week
Most of your fee will go towards helping the orphanage.
Travel to Teach also has programs in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Laos.
Our organisation follows the ethical guidelines for volunteering,
http://www.ethicalvolunteering.org/index.html, as closely as we can.
For any question on this program email
kerstin@travel-to-teach.org 
