Core Competency: job skills for rural Thai youth

As we start a new school term after the longan fruit harvest, we are looking beyond Phrao for the students in need of our Upskills Program. 

Through our benefactor, Spencer Leung, we will share a location on the outskirts of Chiang Mai to help disadvantaged youth learn core competency job skills and career possibilities. Spencer has been working with our staff to encourage small entrepreneurial projects to expand their skills and raise money to support them and Warm Heart over time. 

The location is just south of the city, near small villages as well as farmland leading up into the mountains.  The space is rented from a friend who has a vegetable processing operation on a small farm and makes biochar from macadamia nut shells with a Warm Heart retort.

Spencer has been introducing basic business knowledge and coaching to our staff to bring their ideas to fruition.  The space in Hang Dong will be a learning center as well as a staging location for our biochar products. There is a restaurant space that can be used for a classroom and a "Peace Cafe".  Land is available to grow test crops and run training sessions. 

Finn will shift his English and Upskills base of operation to this new site.  He can take on trainees in the cafe as well as attract youth who are unemployed or underemployed to improve their core job competency. As other programs develop, he can provide the job prep needed for success in finding and keeping satisfying jobs. 

One of the programs in the planning stage is scholarships for Certified Nurses Aides (CNA). This is a certification from the Thai National Nursing Association and gives its graduates access to hospital and care facility positions.  The connections through the McCormick Hospital nursing faculty that Usar Suragarn and Soda have been nurturing for the Access to Care Program will help us extend our care to elders in additional communities.

We recently celebrated our 16th Anniversary with a "Sweet Sixteen" party, spotlighting our graduates.  Mali, our Children's Home Manager put out the word to our network of Warm Heart graduates.  We had 14 graduates join us.  They came from the mountains, Europe, and around Chiang Mai - in person or in short videos (see below for the link to our 16th Anniversary Celebration web page of videos and photos.) They all spoke of the skills they had learned at Warm Heart, including the coaching for career planning and essential skills for interviewing and succeeding in jobs they like.

Thank you for your enduring support of this program. These are key skills in the current economic environment.

Best wishes for the months ahead.

Dana, Michael, Evelind, and the Warm Heart Team

Links:

• Sweet Sixteen Celebration - Graduates, Programs and Joy