The History of Our Volunteers since 2011
 

• The Beginning: It started with the hypothesis that kids at small public schools in Bangkok face more hardship than kids in the countryside because the living cost in the city. So, I looked for a school near my workplace "Bansabai Hostelling International" to start this project so I could coordinate easily. I chose Klong Song Krathiam School in Lat Phrao as the first place I contacted, and I got the green light from Deputy Director Decha and Director Nittaya.

• The Second Step: I asked my boss to reduce the room rate for foreign volunteers to encourage them to come and teach at Klong Song Krathiam School. My boss gave the immediate approval.

• The Third Step: I believe that happiness and confidence make learning easier, so I had our volunteer teachers teach in a "casual conversation" style.

• The Fourth Step: After two years of doing this, I found that it worked! The kids loved it! One of our kind foreign volunteers, Mr. Patrick Nicolazi, told me a story about meeting a fourth-grade student he taught on a bus. Instead of just smiling and waving, the little boy walked up to him, introduced himself, and then in English said, "This is my mom!" That's when I decided I had to expand the project with an "upgrade!"

• The Fifth Step: The "upgrade" was to expand on what the kids liked and what worked well. Every time I held an orientation for our kind foreign volunteers, I would tell them our first goal was to make the kids brave enough to talk to foreigners. Our second goal was to make "English is Fun," no matter the method. We thought it would be best to use a simple medium, which was English through drawing!

• The Sixth... Nope, a Jump to the Ninth! We skipped a few steps. In 2013, our kind foreign volunteer Kylie took over our Facebook page. We also had two kind foreign volunteers, Gerald and Erik, who built a website for us. We also had many kind Thai volunteers who came to help with our project. This helped our project expand to many areas and schools. Some schools were happy to provide free accommodation for our kind foreign volunteers, others provided free meals, and some provided homestay accommodation at a super low cost.

• The Seventh Step: From 2014 to 2015, over two years, we learned that teaching through pictures was an easy and super fun tool for students.

• The Eighth Step: In 2015, after crowdfunding on Taejai.com for books and writing supplies to test teaching through pictures and from the recognition we got from Taejai.com and being featured in the media like "7 See Chuay Chao Baan" (7 Colors Helps Villagers), we gained many friends, mentors, and advisors on a systemic and curriculum level. This helped us become more systematic and understand the kids better, and it gave us a workspace in more than 20 schools across every region.

• 2016: We had 2-5 kind foreign volunteers teaching per day, but almost all of them chose to teach in Bangkok. That made us think we had to help our network schools in the countryside, which got very few volunteers compared to the big cities
  
  From Volunteer to "Voluntour"
  : A Journey of Growth and Impact
   

• 2017: A New Model is Born
  We created a new model to help both foreign volunteers and Thai people practice English in person, based on a win-win situation. We wanted our volunteers to gain local experiences outside of Bangkok and for Thai people—both kids and villagers—in other regions to have a chance to practice English. These two goals led to our new "Voluntour" model, which allows tourists to combine travel with volunteering. We launched this with one-day volunteer trips at Talat Kong Khong.

• 2018: Going Far, Together
  Recognizing that we could go farther by working with the new generation, we collaborated with "Voluntour" volunteers to attend a Social Enterprise class at SWU. We used what we learned to create a business plan for Voluntour, which we submitted to the National Innovation Agency's (NIA) Social Innovation competition. Our plan won an Honorable Mention and received funding to develop a website and application.

• 2019: From Voluntour to Volunfarmer & launched the umbrella brand "VOLUNTIST"
  Expanding on our success, we launched the "Volunfarmer" concept and won third place in a Social Business plan competition. This led to support from CP Meiji and KTB, which allowed us to provide volunteer English teachers to schools in rural areas. and started "VOLUNTIST" to be our umbrella brand ...... 
  
  Then, the COVID-19 pandemic began.
   

• 2020: The Rise of Online Volunteering
  Although we couldn't run our usual on-site activities, we started an online volunteer model. We asked Thai people to help input game data into the Voluntour application. This initiative was a huge success; we received over 10,000 man-hours of help from the Thai online community, and our Facebook page grew in popularity. By the end of the year, as the pandemic subsided, we were able to resume our "Voluntour" activities.
   

• 2021-2023: Building Community-Based Tourism
  We began linking our "Voluntour" village projects with school-based volunteering, creating a single package for schools near Bangkok. By running these packages repeatedly, we were able to train villagers and local students to serve tourists and communicate in English. We focused on building community-based tourism in areas like Nan, Bang Pa-in, and Surin.

• 2024: Empowering the Next Generation
  We are now using the "Voluntour" model to help our partner high schools set up "Tourism Clubs." This step is aimed at empowering the next generation and preparing them for future careers.

• 2025: Looking Ahead
  Today, we have partnered with 40+ schools and are active in 15+ provinces, supported by 5+ sponsors. We've also launched a new business called "For Rest Time"—a dedicated meeting and rest space for our "VOLUNTISTS"