Piloki Community Based Tourism
DEVELOP COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM IN PILOKI VILLAGE, THAILAND
In partnership with Baan Dada Children’s Home, a new opportunity has arisen for volunteers to develop Community-based Tourism in a remote Karen village on the Thai/Burmese border.
Many of Dada’s children are from Piloki, a Karen village that lacks basic health care, formal education, and employment beyond rice farming and fishing. It is only accessible by boat across a massive dammed lake. As a viable alternative to mass tourism and an income-generator for their village, Piloki residents are interested in developing community-based tourism, run by the community, for the community. Fears of tourism turning villages into cultural circuses where daily life is completely disrupted by the money that tourism brings are lessened by the fact that all decision-making is done by co-operative members who belong to the community. Piloki can reinvest their earnings into expanding their school, buying medicine for their clinic, or providing job training for youth. This is not a business benefiting outsiders or just one individual.
The aim is to develop a Volunteer Program in Piloki to assist in the development of Community-based Tourism. Volunteers can help:
- Teach English to potential tour guides.
- Develop maps, itineraries, activity schedules for tourists
- Assist in repairing the guesthouse and building additional bathrooms
- Assist with developing marketing and communication strategies, ie. develop a website and a brochure, contact tourism agencies, research community-based and ecotourism in Thailand, recruit more volunteers to train Piloki residents
- Teach children English, Art, Music (songs and dances), Sports, Health and Environmental Awareness through art, music, skits, and so on.
- Take responsibility for a particular project and see it through to completion, ie. building a playground for the 130 school children
Piloki residents have requested 2-3 volunteers at a time, to stay for 2 weeks or more. Volunteers will eat 3 meals a day (fish and meat included, vegetarians can be accommodated), sleep comfortably, and be included in activities such as swimming, trekking, boating, fishing, cooking, and dancing if they wish. The cost is 150 baht ($4 USD) per day. This is mainly to cover food. No other hidden fees exist.
If you are interested in living in a remote village, learning about Karen culture and daily life, and assisting in developing a very unique tourism project, please contact Lindsay Marsh at
lindsay@volunteerinthailand.org
Please see Piloki Community-based Tourism for more details.
Thank you for your interest.
Lindsay Marsh
Go M.A.D. International Volunteer Coordinator
Ananda Vidyadharma Sustainability Manager
Website: www.baandada.org
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