Mori Grant Report

Deelert Sombatthanasuk

ID 80724840

Mater I, HC

Advisor; Lynn Thiesmeyer

Topic Social Entrepreneurship and Development of Hilltribe Community in Thailand; its present impacts on social and human capital

Location:　Three hilltribe villages (Ban Nong Pak Nam, Ban San Charoen, and Ban Song Kwae Pattana), and the Mirror Foundation Office at Huay Khom Village, Tumbon Mae Yao, Amphur Meung, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand　（September 2007）

Brief Action Summary：

· By serving as an intern at The Mirror Foundation office, I learned working functions of the organization, motivation to pursue social entrepreneurship business, program expectations for both the organization and the community, past outcomes, and future plans

· By living with a family in the Nong Pak Naam village and talking with hilltribe minorities in other villages, I learned the living lifestyle of the Arkha and Lahu ethnicity, in regards to different age ranges and social units. I also visited school, child center, and the village market. Social Capital in forms of network, norms, and obligations and social problems were closely observed.

Research Methodology

I hold two positions during one week of stay on the highland; one was the volunteer staff at the Mirror Foundation office responsible for updates their e-commerce websites and provide orientation to foreign tourists who about to begun their hilltribe trekking tour with hilltribe guides. By volunteering at an SE office in a hilltribe area, I learned the mission, work scope, staff background, and the working discipline through meetings and tasks. The daily all-staff morning meeting was useful in learning about organization and building connections with hilltribe staffs. All workers stay in the dormitory attached to the office, so I also had opportunities to conduct personal interview after work. The office also serves a venue for any hilltribe people, especially children, to take a break, play, and interact with staffs.

Another status was a volunteer teacher in Huay Khom School for five days, which came with an opportunity to stay with an Akha family in Nong Pak Nam village. Through living with a family visits to school and other villages, I learned the living lifestyle of the Akha and Lahu ethnicity, in regards to their different social units. I conducted three rough village appraisals to examine different social functionings and social networks during the community meeting along with other volunteer teaching participants.

In the end, I conducted four formal interviews lasted about 30-45 minutes each and several informal interviews in different age groups along with my own observation. In the formal interview, I follow my own set of questions, which mainly ask about 1.)their living lifestyles, 2.)family history, 3.)their living difficulties, 4.)family future expectation, 5.)perception regarding changes in the hilltribe community, 6.)perception toward NGOs and the Mirror Foundation program in particular. Informal interviews are conducted with 2 children aged 15 and 17 and two adults aged 43 and 52; all of them are Akha and woke with the Mirror Foundation social entrepreneurship program as a host family for volunteer teachers since the beginning of the volunteer program six years ago.

Most interviews conduct at nighttime when teachers were free from doing educational activities and recreational activities with the villagers. Activities include teaching children in class, conduct checklist for nationality registration documentation, sport games, and songs. Children of the village serve as my translators for interview with elderly people who could not communicate in Thai language and sometimes during interview with the parental age groups when they had difficulty deliver the Thai words. Observations derive from my own opinion and often influenced by instructions of other volunteer teaching colleagues as well as office staffs.

III. Preliminary Finding

3.1 Social Entrepreneurship

In this section, I describe the characteristics of three social entrepreneurship program that run by the Mirror Foundation, namely hilltribe trekking eco-tourism, handicraft e-commerce, and volunteer teaching. The three departments run a venture that earns the office sufficient income to operate the program without a philanthropic help from international or domestic donors. The three programs also receive most attention from the public in terms of number of visits through online webpage. Each description divides into the concerned problems that each program attempts to address perceived by the Foundation staffs, the nature of the program functions as described in the program mission, the impacts on the villages as perceived from my informants, and side notes from my observation.

Hilltribe Trekking E-co Tourism

Concerned Problem; low-paid and unfair treatment to hilltribe guides, inaccurate information, conflicts through cultural misunderstanding, scam tour

SE Program; through online advertisement, eco trekking tourism became a new business opportunity in Mae Yao sub district. Foreign and Thai trekking tourists receive orientation at the office and led by the guide from the areas. Guides receive more wage rate, less conflicts with villagers through established regulations. Flexibility to arrange short or long term stay with optional volunteer opportunities.

Impacts on the villages; more opportunity to preserve their traditional cultures and lifestyle as tourist interest, more income channel through hosting guests or selling handicraft products, interaction with lowland/foreign travelers.

Note; Many foreign tourists repeat their journey with the organization. Routes are determined and villages outside the routes were excluded from the tour program, which explain why some villages preserve their cultures and natural resources more than the others. Tourists often donate money to villagers in community funds or children education fund.

Handicraft E-Commerce

Concerned problem; limited market for hilltribe handicraft, preservation of traditional hilltribe arts, fair-trade opportunity, women-targeted program

SE Program, the organization hires 20 women who stay at home from Akha Lahu tribes to produce traditional handicrafts using standard clothing size system. The organization will buy the handicrafts in a reasonable prize and sell them online via an internet and online payment.

Impacts on the village; employment opportunities, more income, learn about online purchasing and internet uses, open up new market and new consumer group, new traditional craft-applied products such as whistle

Note; hilltribe people only produce handicrafts but there was no training on market skills and very brief introduction on technological internet usages for the trade. The organization is running good business with the product selling online as many items are in high demand.

Volunteer Teaching Project

Concern problems; an inferior of education level in rural school, limited interaction with lowland people that prevent cross-culture understanding from both low-highland people

SE Program; Via internet advertisement, web board, and online registration, lowland people pay 980 Baht to serve the office as a volunteer teacher in hilltribe school and live with local people for 4-5days. They also serve the office as a volunteer in the villages for educational or health program with emphasis on cultural exchanges for better understanding and talking Thai language with children.

Impacts on the village; exposure with lowland people who possess hilltribe-friendly mindset, realize the importance of education for children, opportunity to ask questions and learn about lowland cultures, new social network with lowland people through contact exchanges, more community activities and better intra community cooperation.

Notes; participants were discourages to discuss to hilltribe villagers about politics-involved matters including different religions, ethnic segregation, and community politics with residence and community leaders.

3.2 Community Assessment

First, I present the rapid community assessment from the three villages that I stayed (2 Akha and 1 Lahu). This information was derived during the community meeting that volunteer teachers had with the villagers as well as the community leaders

•Community type: 20-70 Households (70-350 People) Mono-ethinic and Mono-religious

•Family: Nucleus ,2-4 Children often feed Pigs and Chickens. Many relatives reside in the same village. Missing of single individuals in the 20s –50s age groups as they often migrate to town for taking on a job.

•Occupation: Men- Day Labor in City and Women- on Farm（herb, rice, corn）, Tourism, Handicraft,

•Facilities: Electricity (2 villages with solar pad and one village with no electricity due to insufficiency number of population to meet government criteria for a community to receive the facility ), Mountain Stream Irrigation, Community Center, periodical Mobile Medical Unit visits, Designated community school (Distance away range from 1km-5km)

•Social Networks: Church for Christian village, School, NGOs, Government visits for nationality registration, Community Leader who serve as a community representative in the official sub district committee.

•Income : Average of male and female per day when they take a job is 120Baht (Male figure is higher than female)

•Local Problem through the lens of local people: Income poverty, Missing and unfair treatment of Nationality obtainment, Government unfair treatment in documentations, Distance from social welfare facilities such as main road, schools and hospital, Cultural erosion as Christian community no longer practice superstitious celebration and more influence of low land cultures on lifestyles of new families through television, education, and lowland people interaction.

•Local View of Community Transition: Inevitable, unconcern, positive. Traditional community is transforming its living lifestyles and social norms to be more similar to lowland people. Young people perceive this change as positive; a means to improve their livings and community. Young adults and parents find the transformation to be inevitable as they do not find a good reason to resist the pull factors from lowland. Those pull factors include income opportunity, school education for children, hospital health service, and nationality documentation incentive. The elderly group has no particular comments with it as they are not concerned much with the changes.

Secondly, I present a problem assessment, which I divided into two categories, namely the traditional inherent problems (those that already existed in the village before the presence of social entrepreneurship support) and the contemporary development-related problem, which were arisen with the coming of social entrepreneurship and other development programs. These lists were derived via my own judgment and views of social entrepreneurship staffs based on the living standard of average Thai people and basic human well-being conditions. Self evaluation of local people of their community problem can be found in the community assessment section above.

•Inherent Problem (Traditional)	•Development-Related Contemporary Problem
–Sanitation　and Health –Physical Infrastructure; no road irrigation, and electricity –Income Poverty –Substance Abuse on marijuana –Marginalization and Alienization from lowland people and government –Lack and Difficult access to Social Infrastructure ; School, Hospital, Nationality –Lack of Cross-ethnic Cooperation across villages	–Depriving Social Restrictions (I.e. Religious Division) –Cultural Erosion through new lowland Norms –High Dependency on Helping Hands \, especially on education -Low political conflicts; ethnic segregation in schools, corrupted community leader who want to be represented, and

3.3 Preliminary Framework

Here, I present a systematic framework that I derive after conducting an analysis of my finding data. They are my starting departure for future research pursuit.

The arrows represent cooperation in the social entrepreneurship programs. I found that these interactions occur as a result of conditions such as risk aversion, being needed, voluntary incentive, obliged by an institutional mission, and norms. These conditions apply to actors of all three boxes namely hilltribe villagers, social entrepreneurship staffs and volunteers, and institutional social service officers, including school teachers or government staffs. Three mechanisms from the social entrepreneurship program that enrich the capability of hilltribe people are innovation, empowerment, and obligation. Innovation such as e-commerce program opens new market for hilltribe handicrafts adding more capital opportunities and knowledge on technology to people. Empowerment programs such as trekking tourism or volunteer teaching project enrich the knowledge of people on cross cultural difference or knowledge necessary for adapting or assimilating in order to gain access to social welfare institutions. These programs also raise the awareness of tribal cultural preservation and cultural differences with mainstream lowland. The obligation mechanisms set regulations in the cooperation in order to ensure efficiency and further progress to achieve the main development goals. For example, in order to serve as a guide or join a classroom teaching with volunteer teachers, the guide has to be drug-free and not engage in illegal activities or the children have to be in school to interact with teachers,

3.4 Assumption

After presenting the work that I have done and preliminary findings I observed and gained, I propose my preliminary hypothesis as a base for furthering my interest framework and more knowledge on this topic. After data analysis, I assume that social entrepreneurship programs serve as an empowering channel for the marginalized hilltribe people to sustain and improve their livings by means of a capability to access and exercise the mainstream social functioning?’

4.1 Future Planning

Below, I list my post-fieldwork considerations on the social entrepreneurship impacts on rural setting; they serve as departing points for next fieldwork round

•How to comprehend and apply social capital and human capital or Sen’s Capability Approach in an integrated development framework of rural society by connecting how social capital structure that already exists, or is lacking, will result in the development or non-development of human capital. How to study the impact of social entrepreneurship programs on the social-human capital development?

•How to create a framework to explain the possible benefits or disadvantages of the transition from a rural hilltribe village that relied on self-sustaining and agricultural living, to a lowland-influenced one? What need to be improved in the evaluation measurements?

•How to conduct and evaluate the Rural System Analysis, which promise to reveal the resource consumption activities and approaches to utilize surrounding resource?

I would like to thank the Mori Grant and its administrative staffs for their generous support that made my research possible. I hope to further the knowledge on this topic in detail and insightfully expand the scope of involved actors and mechanisms in the future.