Teaching English in Thailand: Chiang Mai

Teaching English in Thailand: Chiang Mai

Teaching English in Thailand: Chiang Mai

Elephant camp & teaching English in Thailand

Volunteer, teaching English in Thailand or volunteering with elephants.

Almost 70 elephants live in the elephant camp, which is one hour north of Chiang Mai by car, and is a popular tourist spot. Foreign visitors flock to the elephant camp each day in order to marvel at the elephant show, and to observe the pachyderms as they bathe and make abstract art (throwing paint on canvas.)

Using the tight financial means provided by camp admission fees, over 200 employees care for the animals. As a volunteer, you will help to clean, feed, and care for the elephants, train them for the show, clean out their enclosures, and offer information to visitors. Aside from this, you will be teaching English in Thailand to the camp staff and in a nearby school for children from local mountain tribes.

From Monday through Friday, you will stay in a wooden house at the project site, where full board will be provided. At the weekend, you will need to arrange your own accommodation.

Temple schools in Chiang Mai: Teaching English in Thailand

Chiang Mai has an incredible abundance of brightly-coloured, impressive monasteries and temples, many of which run their own schools, offering ample opportunity for teaching English in Thailand. These schools are happy to receive the help of foreign volunteers who can teach English to their students. Even though the number of students at the temple can vary from about 80 to 1500, one thing about these schools is constant: financial means are tight.

As a volunteer, you will assist in teaching English in Thailand, possibly teaching English to a class of your own. Many of the monks are under the custody of the monastery because their parents have died, disappeared, or could not afford to care for them. In the monastery, the young men have the chance to gain an education and to live a safe (though simple and austere) life. As a volunteer teaching English in Thailand, you must respect the rules of the monastery.

Teaching English in Thailand in a temple school, you will stay in a volunteer house and receive lunch at the project site.

Orphanage Project
The largest orphanage in northern Thailand is home to babies and small children as well as school children and young adults up to age 18. The children usually come from poorer backgrounds, where drugs and alcohol often played a roll in their lives, and some lost their parents when they were very young.

As a volunteer, you will mainly care for the smaller children up to age 5, supporting the full-time staff of the orphanage (feeding, diaper-changing, washing, etc.) Your co-workers will be happy to see you devote your time to individual children, hugging and playing with them, because many of these children have not received very much love and security in their lives.

It may also be part of your job to repair toys, clean up, or even to do renovation work on the building. As a volunteer, you will help out from Saturday through Thursday, working about 6 hours each day. Accommodation is located in the volunteer house with breakfast, or in a nearby flat.