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Today Praew and I made a visit to the Mercy Centre in Klong Toey. I’ve heard about the many good things they have been doing for the children (and adults) of Klong Toey for a very long time and finally decided to make an appointment and talk to them.

In addition to running dozens of schools in the slums of Bangkok, they also run vocational training programs for adults and other community development projects. I can honestly say that my discussions with them barely scratched the surface of the many amazing things they are doing in the community, so if you are interested in finding out more about them, please take a look at their website:
http://www.mercycentre.org

In addition to making a small financial donation, we went there to see if there are any other ways that we might be able to offer some small assistance to them. In particular, my limited experience with social services and charities is that they tend to attract both professionals and volunteers who may have a leaning towards the social sciences, arts, and language teaching. And all of these things are great. But what of the budding scientist or engineer? Who will they have as a role model?

My thought in going there was in regards to the older students they have that are making it through high school and are beginning to think about college or a career. Maybe the ones that are intellectually minded. When we were there, we spoke with two very nice women that worked there. One of them summarized the situation with their children quite well: these children grow up surrounded by food vendors and workers at the nearby port authority; they can’t even imagine what a job in science or technology or engineering might be let alone want to choose it as a career.

I believe that we choose our futures from the set of role models we are familiar with in our surroundings the same way an artist chooses colors from the palette they have on hand. And so it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Praew and I could offer to be such a model for any math and science oriented students they might know of.

This blog is about applying science and technology projects towards real world problems and applications. In this day and age, so much of the world is driven by science and technology. Maybe some of their kids might want to help out in building an excavator or learning to install solar panels. Or maybe one of them might be interested to follow Praew around at her robot lab for a week to see what studying robotics is all about. We also have a network of similarly technologically oriented people who do things like organizing educational robot camps for kids. We discussed with the staff the possibility of sponsoring a robot camp at their school.

I’m not sure yet what direction we may go with them, but I was very impressed by the conversation we had today. I really got the sense that they have their organizational act together. Unlike some of the charity organizations I’ve interacted with in the past, I think they may be in a position to take advantage of some of the ways in which we might be of assistance. At the very least, our company may be able to donate some of our older computer equipment for use in their classrooms.

If you have any thoughts or want to collaborate with us on contributing in some way,  feel free to get in touch with me and let me know.