I’ve spent the last month and a half volunteering at the Children’s Organization of Southeast Asia (COSA), located in the province of Mae Rim, just outside the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. COSA is an amazing organization dedicated to the prevention of human trafficking in the northern regions of the country. I’m living at the Baan Yuu Suk Shelter, which houses twenty sexually exploited, abused, or at-risk girls. As a volunteer at COSA, you are given so much freedom to explore personal projects and build workshops for the girls around your specific work/volunteer experience. I’d volunteered as a Planned Parenthood peer educator throughout high school, so I knew coming in that I would want to do something sex-ed related. Thanks to the amazing staff here at the shelter, I was given the go-ahead to create an entire curriculum of sex ed and to write up reusable lesson plans for future volunteers to educate more girls once I’ve left the shelter. So far, I have done one workshop on healthy relationships and one on self-empowerment and the experiences have been so unbelievably rewarding. I have several more planned around topics like birth control, decision-making, and LGBT issues.
It’s hard to describe how in love I am with these girls here at COSA! They are some of the happiest, sweetest, vivacious and talented people I’ve ever been lucky enough to meet. Shimi, Ping, Aying and New make up the group of littlest girls here, ages five to eleven, and as soon as they get home from school they are in a volunteer’s arms for a hug and begging to be pushed on the swings. Goy, Eye, Gig, Sri-Tong and Gan 1 are such little ladies, so polite and sweet and lovely. Yui, Meeju, Gung, and Saichai have the funniest personalities and are always there to mercilessly tease you or challenge you to a game to a game of ping-pong. Kannikar, Nittaya, Rahtee, Gan 2, and Fon are quieter but so sweet I have to fight the urge to hug them whenever I see them. Volunteers at COSA are expected to be mentors and role models for the girls, and I often feel like an older sister. In addition to teaching my workshops and English classes on the weekends, we supervise trips to the library, the pool, yoga, the market, and help with homework whenever they need it. Since we are living right at the shelter, we’re constantly interacting with the girls whether we’re doing arts and crafts with the little ones, reading with them, learning Thai from the better English speakers Eye, Yui, and Gang, doing hair, picking out movies for them to watch, taking pictures, or just hanging out and talking about their days. I feel so lucky to be able to stay for four months and get closer to the girls every day.
One of the absolute best parts of volunteering at COSA is meeting all the other people who come to live and work here. There are about seven volunteers in the house at any given time and they have been consistently hilarious and amazing and I’ve made such great friends. A lot of volunteers are American but I’ve met Kiwis, Brits, Germans and Canadians. It’s so cool to meet people from so many different backgrounds with such interesting stories and life experience. Mondays and Tuesdays are our days off, and we almost always go into Chiang Mai to relax, get massages, explore, eat the best food, and go out at night to dance and meet all sorts of interesting people from around the world. A hugely inspirational person I’ve met is the founder and president of COSA, Mickey Choothesa, who was born in Thailand and moved to the States as a teenager. He’s worked as a translator, ethnologist, and photographer for NGOs all over Asia and has photographed every major conflict in the past two decades. Mickey is the legal guardian for all the girls here at the shelter and is a father figure to them. He also regularly leads photo expeditions into the hill tribes and his current work “Humans for Sale” is being exhibited in cities in the US. The production company Shine Global, which just won back-to-back Oscars for their films War/Dance and Inocente, is developing a documentary about COSA and Mickey and it’s so exciting that so much awareness will be brought to the organization.
The girls at COSA make me so proud every single day! Six of them, Rahtee, Ning, Saichai, Sri-Tong, Eye, and Kannikar just graduated from middle school and will be attending high school in May. For many, they are the first in their families to ever get so far in their schooling and they are role models in their local communities. In addition, Ploy and Gan 2, the first girls from COSA to apply to university, were accepted about a month ago! It’s huge news for everyone and we are so happy and excited for them. COSA also has a partner organization called Hands Across the Water located in Sydney, Australia, and they are generously sponsoring five of the girls to come to all the way to Sydney for a visit, based on how impressed they were with an English skit some of the girls put on a couple months ago. This is their first time leaving the country (some have not even been out of Mae Rim) and there is a huge opportunity for them.
As much as I’m in love with the girls here at the Baan Yuu Suk shelter, I’ve also fallen for the beautiful country of Thailand. The people are so friendly, welcoming, and generous, the landscape is lush and green and fragranced with flowers, the food is unbelievable, and there’s always something to do. I love the Sunday night walking markets, the night bazaar, and how easy it is to travel around. My friend Lana and I went to Pai, a gorgeous town three hours north of Chiang Mai, where we visited temples, soaked in the natural hot springs, and tubed down the river. I’m planning on going on an elephant trek and visiting the hill tribes during my next days off. Songkran, the Thai New Year, is coming up soon and it’s a huge festival in Chiang Mai with people constantly splashing water on each other, which will be a relief as April is the hottest month in Thailand. I hope to travel more after my COSA placement and visit Bangkok and the islands down south, so we’ll see what happens!
Being at COSA has made me so grateful to Carpe Diem Education for finding me somewhere so perfect, to my family and friends for supporting me, to the amazing staff and volunteers here for teaching me so much and especially to the girls for inspiring me and making me so happy every single day. Taking the Latitudes gap year was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and I’m so thrilled to be a part of both the COSA and the Carpe Diem family!