Education Thailand Project #29444

Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability

by Sathirakoses Nagapradipa Foundation

Project Report | Apr 27, 2026
SENS 2026 - Another Season of Deep Connection and Transformation

By Ted Mayer | Program Director

SENS 2026 Group on a Field Trip to the South

Dear Kind Donors and Supporters,

We are thrilled to announce the graduation of 12 SENS 2026 participants. Your generous contributions through GlobalGiving allowed us to carry out SENS 2026 to our deep satisfaction despite very limited financial resources.

Another Successful Season

Our cohort this year consisted of 12 people with very diverse ethnic, religious, national, and geographical backgrounds, representing six different countries in Asia. The spirit of diversity manifested itself throughout the three months of SENS 2026, in which students heard personal stories coming out of others’ local milieu, shared their traditional costumes, and taught each other their traditional dances. At times on a field trip, three or four women would appear wearing hijabs loaned by our one Muslim student. After all of that time spent together, national and religious boundaries seemed to become lighter, and human-to-human connections came to the fore. A Thai neighbor in Ratchaburi who attended our graduation ceremony with her two teenage daughters remarked how rare it was for her to see young adults being so supportive and accepting of each other, as each presented their final talk to the group. “It felt like watching a family,” she said.

Alongside the director, SENS 2026 was run by a strong work team of SENS alumni who have been with SENS for the second or third time. Now with much greater knowledge of SENS, Adity (nickname) from India and Lien (nickname) from Vietnam came back to lead tutoring groups for the second year. Working with friends we know well allowed us to focus on our own tasks, trusting that we always had each other's backs.

In every SENS classroom, learning with joy is always one of our top priorities. Understanding that the traditional classroom often feels boring and teacher-centric, we at SENS engage students with interactive activities to ensure they stay active and involved. And in SENS 2026, we once again successfully created this learning environment for our students. Some participants with a teaching background mentioned that they would like to re-create this engaging space for their students back home.

Highlights and Challenges

On the positive side, the students in the 2026 cohort were remarkably caring and solicitous of each other and the cohort as a whole. Some of the students were particularly good at seeing if someone was left out, and if they were, inviting them into a small group or a counseling session.
For the first time ever, we combined our field trip to a forest temple with three days of a Power Analysis workshop with one of Thailand’s best group facilitators, for an especially deep experience in a rural and forest environment.
Like in previous years, teaching about inequality or climate change to a new group in an ever-changing environment allowed us to innovate and refine our syllabus. Small changes added up to more thorough engagement with issues and new ways of drawing students in. A small example was demonstrating exactly how scientists measure things like CO2 and temperature, in a context where social media allows denial of what are in reality tried and true methods.
Au (nickname), the leader of the afternoon classes and primary assistant to the director, introduced student drafting and delivery of a videotaped news report as a new learning tool, and students did amazingly well sharing about issues in their home countries.
On the challenging side, it was surreal sometimes to be working to build a community with a deep understanding of how violence, severe inequalities, authoritarianism, and climate devastation occur and can be met courageously, at the very same time that a genocide against Palestinians continued into its third year, a major new and unjustified war was launched against Iran, the country of Cuba was blockaded, and immigration police detained and even murdered citizens in the US. The personal challenge came from wanting to keep abreast of developments in the world while needing to avoid the heaviness and exhaustion that even physically distant chaos and violence can bring. Meeting that challenge moving forward will allow us to bring a consistent and appropriate warmth and light-heartedness into our support for students’ growth, despite horrifying world events.
There were moments when every member of the work team seemed to be exhausted and overwhelmed, and this was a signal to once again make our relationships within the work team a priority, even if it means completing program work to a lesser degree of perfection.
Finally, despite the student cohort being wonderfully supportive and cooperative, and achieving some of the best scores in our 2^nd practice test that we’ve ever had, it seemed to some of us that more students struggled with paying attention to in-class processes for extended periods than in the past. The director believes that in future SENS programs we will need to explicitly address our relationships with AI, social media, and the Internet’s ever-present demand to be stimulated with new information. This will likely involve new program and lifestyle remedies that go beyond banning screens in the morning class.

At this critical time in human history, we believe our encouragement of young changemakers to form deep and durable relationships across national, ethnic, and religious lines is an essential groundwork for a bigger transformation. With your support, we have slowly but steadily expanded the network of young activists and educators across Asia who are engaged in both the inner and outer dimensions of that work. That has immediate impacts in creating a joyful and safe learning space, and in the longer-term bodes well for working together in the future. Thank you for helping to make this happen!

Please consider sharing this report with your network to help amplify our work!

With deep gratitude,

The SENS Work Team

SENS 2026 Cohort

SENS 2026 Work Team

SENS 2026 Students Performing a Mon Dance

Leader of the Power Analysis Workshop

SENS 2026 Students in a Classroom Activity

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Jan 3, 2026
Preparing for Our 11th Season Thanks to You!

By Au Nguyen | SENS Program Assistant

SENS 2025 Opening Ceremony

Dear Kind Donors and Supporters,

Warm greetings from the SENS Work Team, and a heartfelt thanks for your generous support over the past year.

Despite all the odds, together with your support, we had a successful year of crowdfunding and are now preparing for the 11th season of the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS), launching in early 2026.

This year, we are welcoming a new cohort of 11 dedicated young adults from across Asia. Your kindness helped make their participation possible. In this update, we’re excited to share the profiles of three students who received your support to join our program. Through your generosity, they will soon begin their journey in our three-month residential program focused on English, leadership, and cross-cultural learning.

Before the program starts, we’ve been working consistently to ensure every student can travel safely and legally to Thailand. Our logistics coordinator has been assisting participants with essential travel documents and guidance—especially those coming from regions facing instability and violence. For some students, even reaching our program means navigating checkpoints and avoiding conflict zones. We are deeply moved by their courage and determination—and we are doing everything we can to support them on this path.

At the same time, we are continuing our fundraising efforts to fully meet the SENS 2026 budget. As we begin the new year, we’re reaching out to long-time friends and supporters for small holiday-season donations to help us close the remaining gap. Behind the scenes, our Director is finalizing the program calendar, contacting workshop facilitators, and local leaders to set up our field excursions. We're also preparing for our staff orientation meeting, where we’ll introduce a new tutor to the team and guide her through the values and vision of the SENS program. We believe that building strong relationships and shared understanding among team members is the foundation for a successful season.

Once again, thank you for believing in our mission. Your support means the world to us—and even more to the students whose lives you help change.

Wishing you a joyful and meaningful New Year!

With deep gratitude,
The SENS Work Team

SENS 2026 Student: Anshika (nickname) from India

SENS 2026 Student: Nhi (nickname) from Vietnam

SENS 2026 Student: Win Moe (nickname) from Myanmar

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Sep 5, 2025
Circles of Mutual Support Grow Stronger with Your Kind Help

By Theodore (Ted) Mayer | Designer and Director

Core Work Team for the Co-Counseling Workshop

Hello Dear Friends and Supporters,

This is a brief update on the current work of the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS).

There are a couple of ways we can explain the scope of our work these days. One way is to talk about the different programs we run. First, our primary annual program is the three-month SENS program that goes from January to April, next year January 11 – April 4, 2026. Second, we have a variety of programs for Myanmar people who have been forcibly displaced to the Thai border town of Mae Sot. We just completed a program for young adults there, and will offer further programs in October. Third, we offer one-on-one mentoring for a few of our alumni from various programs who need extra help and support due to life circumstances or due to the important work they are doing. That program is called 3OM. Finally, our Apprentice Leaders in Sustainability Program (ALPS) is a higher-level training in which our outstanding alumni are invited to deepen their learning through further study and by helping design and run our SENS programs.

In terms of the two fundraising projects we run on GlobalGiving, we can divide them into: 1) any program that works with a new group of students, and introduces them to our primary points of emphasis, namely: a) supporting self-discovery and self-awareness; b) developing the skills of a genuine and respectful listener as an important part of building relationships; c) raising awareness of social structures that promote inequality and violence; d) raising awareness of the seriousness of ecological challenges, especially the climate crisis; and e) encouraging students to take stock of their immediate social context as well as the global one, and respond energetically and with confidence by taking action in some form. This work with new students is supported by the project we are reporting on here, namely “Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability.” 2) any program that provides ongoing support to students we have already worked with, made possible by our sister project, “Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis.” Funds from that project enable the 3OM, ALPS, and Mae Sot follow-up programs.

In general our approach emphasizes the building of long-term relationships of mutual support. As our societies promote isolation in many ways, we find that one-on-one and face-to-face relationships of mutual trust help remind us of the joy of learning and working together, and of making real changes in the world together. This requires that we do our best to follow-up with our participants and provide concrete support in whatever way we can. When things are going well, as they have been recently, it is the participants themselves who take the initiative to maintain and deepen those relationships.

In the last few months, Paung (nickname), one of our ALPS members living in the border town of Mae Sot, began encouraging young people she knew to get together to share experiences, to learn together, and to meet on a regular basis. She invited me, as the director of SENS, to run a two-day workshop on listening practices based in Co-Counseling for this group at the end of August. This workshop, working with new students, was also supported by funds from this GlobalGiving project.

As often happens, participants in the workshop were somewhat hesitant to show deep feelings of loss or frustration with life’s challenges, though having been forcibly displaced from their home country, such feelings of loss and frustration are well known to them. Yet was clear that holding such feelings in or keeping them to themselves impedes their ability to move forward. As they begin to see in the workshop that one can cry, and laugh, and express one’s feelings fully without losing face, it brings great relief. And they often leave such sessions feeling deeper confidence in their own value as human beings, while at the same time the horizon of possibilities opens up.

We also held support groups in which the participants chose themes of shared concern, including in this case: Preparing to Attend University; Language Learning; Creating and Maintaining a Business; How to Attain Legal Documents, and more. The sharing in these support groups was energetic and lively.

I am grateful to the participants for inviting me and for opening up about their lives and experiences with me and with each other.

To you, our kind donors, we want you to know that your donations help us meet the expenses for workshops such as this Introduction to Co-Counseling. Even more importantly, they allow us to offer scholarships for participation in our upcoming SENS 2026 program at a time when funds for philanthropic work, especially from governmental institutions, tends to be shrinking. We would like to say thank you for the help many of you have given over months and years! We are deeply grateful.

We will have a four-day campaign from September 8-12 called Passport to Purpose, where any donation, even as little as $10, will be matched proportional to the funds we raise over the four days. Please stay tuned for information about this campaign, and tell your friends about this opportunity to support our work.

Thank you so much!

Ted Mayer, Designer and Director of the SENS Program

Demonstrating Listening with Respect

The Speaker (R) Leads, the Listener (L) Follows

A Movement Interlude

Sharing Informally in Pairs or Small Groups

Full Group Photo

Links:

Attachments:

Our Brochure for the Upcoming SENS 2026 Program (PDF)

7 Attachments

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