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Tag Archives: Building Trust
School Test
Moving Schools Project: Week Two on Site:
After managing to put in the first foundation post at the end of last week, our determined and energetic volunteers worked through the weekend and managed to fix three further foundation posts on site. The team worked through heavy rain, attempting to remove water from the foundation holes before they filled up with new rain water. It was great to see their clear understanding of the tasks, each volunteer knew their role and worked together as a team to construct the foundation posts in a quick and efficient manner.
It takes a great deal of patience and careful orientation to place the truck tyres into the foundation holes. The wires which can be seen in image above plot out the central line of the foundation post. It is very important that the wires remain in the correct place to ensure we have an accurate measurement across the school grid.
On the last day, many of the school students helped out the volunteers to carry gravel to the holes. It was great to see the kids excited about the school project and get involved in lending a hand on site.
We were very sad to loose nine of our volunteers on Tuesday, as they returned to Hong Kong for their Summer break. Ashley, Airi, Stephanie, Charity, Chung, David, Hin, Nicholas and Jim made an incredible impact on the school site and we are very grateful for the help they offered over the last month. Thankfully, Jim will remain with us for another month and our UK volunteers Claire, Ben and Mark will continue to help out over the next week.
As we awaited recruitment of new volunteers to assist with the foundation posts and with a day of continuous heavy rain the remaining volunteers spent Wednesday at the Global Neighbors workshop. The workshop team had managed to drill all the required holes in the steel and cut to the correct dimensions to allow us to assemble the first classroom module. With great excitement the team assembled the steel construction simply slotting the steel plates in place and bolting together.
It was very exciting to see the pieces come together and gain a real understanding of the size and scale of one school classroom module. It was also very reassuring to know that in no time at all the unit was assembled.
We had the great opportunity to finally see how the bamboo wall panels which the G’yaw G’yaw workers made a few weeks ago would sit inside the steel frame. The frame slotted inside the frame perfectly and the combination of the dark metal steel frame looked fantastic next to the natural bamboo wall panel. We cannot wait to see how one fully assembled unit with full wall panels, flooring and roof will look very soon.
Now that we have tested the first module we can confirm all dimensions with the workshop and order steel for the ten classroom modules. Over the next few weeks the apprentices at the workshop will be plotting, marking out and drilling many holes to create the final steel frame structure. The steel will be brought to the school and assembled on site. In the meantime, there is lots of painting to be done!
The Volunteers arrive!
After a great set of meetings with Non Profits, Architects and Social Enterprises in Mae Sot last week, we were eager to get on with the school build and were very excited to meet our first set of volunteers who will be working on the ‘Moving Schools‘ project throughout the month of June. We are very lucky to have three volunteers from the UK and 9 students from Hong Kong University who have all travelled to Mae Sot to help out on our project. On Monday, the cameraman for the project arrived just in time to film the first meet and greet of the Volunteer Induction Day. We look forward to posting video footage of the project as the weeks progress.
Yesterday, we met with the volunteers and gave them an introduction on the background of Building Trust International and an update on the ‘Moving Schools‘ project. All the volunteers seemed very keen to get stuck in and were excited to know we would be spending the afternoon visiting the current site of the Kwe Ka Baung School meeting some of the students and teachers and assessing the current facilities.
At 3pm we re-grouped at Kwe Ka Baung school, with the volunteers travelling through town by bicycle (a mini Tour De France in Mae Sot.) The first task was to let the volunteers gain an understanding of the current site and the school buildings. Edward a volunteer from Hong Kong University who is currently teaching at Kwe Ka Baung kindly agreed to take the volunteers on a tour of the site answering many questions from the group. It was great to hear the volunteers asking important questions such as the number of students per classroom and the utilities available on site. Edward showed us the newly built mushroom hut where the school hope to gain some extra finance through selling the mushrooms in town. He also pointed out the current problems with the school classrooms, from poorly built roofs to the issues of sound travelling through the current classroom walls.
It was great for the volunteers to meet some on the current Kwe Ka Baung students and staff. As the group walked through the site children shouted and waved saying ‘Hello’ to the volunteers.
We set the volunteers an interesting task for the afternoon, first splitting them into three groups (Red, Blue and Green.) They were given a tape measure and a specific building within the site to survey. We asked the groups to take key dimensions of the buildings, plot where supports were on the classrooms, note materials used on the build and measure wall thickness’s. This information will allow us to get a clear understanding of the facilities on the current site and help us to achieve an even better layout and plan for the new site. By gaining an understanding of the needs of the current school we will gain an insight in to the needs that can be applied to the new site.
Each team had their own ideas on how to measure the height of the school classrooms, from guessing the height based on their own height to standing on a chair to try and reach the top of the school classroom. It was great to see the teams having fun and enjoying carrying out the site survey.
After an hour taking dimensions and working out the layout of the classrooms the teams re-grouped to show their layout plan. It was amazing to see teams working together to come up with the easiest and quickest solution to survey the site. After a great first day, we finished by setting the volunteers a new task, to look into the history of the Burmese and Karen people. We want the volunteers to have a clear understanding of the people they are helping, in order to give them a deeper understanding of their ‘client’ before we start the build. Teams were given an A1 piece of paper with a chosen period of time, 1950 – 1969, 1970- 1989, 1990 – 2012. We hope that the volunteers will be able to research the history and on Thursday we will re-group to see what they have found out. Each group was also given two categories to research from art to music, fashion to religion, language to culture. We think this will be a very beneficial task to all of those involved in the ‘Moving Schools‘ project and look forward to seeing the results later in the week.
I look forward to updating your with more pictures and video clips as the build progresses.
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