“Hi everyone, My name is Grace. I am a 4th year student from Chiang Mai University. I started my internship at Pratthanadee Foundation on early May this year and today, 8th August, is my last day here. Since I have worked here for approximately 3 months, I want to share my experience and my thought here with everyone.”

“Let’s start with how I got here. At the beginning this year, I needed to find a place for my internship since I am studying about social science and development and I found the foundation through their website. When I finish looking at the website, I knew this is the place I was looking for.”

“When I started the intern, I learned that the staff who work here have to put all energy and effort, heart and soul into the job and the people they help. It is more than just receiving money and teaching English to the women. The staff get to know every students here, try to let the students open up to them and help figure out the solutions to their problems. The work they do here is more than just giving English skills and computer skills to the students so they can find a better job or get a better pay-check, what they do here is helping women here think about their future. The staff are providing women a sufficient sustainable life, truly lifted-up their life. Every workshops they had here are all meaningful and had a clear purpose. What they do each day make a great impact on a huge group of people. Money comes and goes but skills stay.”

“Working here, I understand and see the other perspective I have never seen before. I used to wonder why people, who claimed that they are unprivileged, do the commonly known things they can do to make their life easier, better, like save money for the future, plan their life, etc. but the more time I spend here, I see and understand that these thing aren’t that easy to achieved. These women never thought about future, let alone thinking or planing about the future. These women lack the confident to even have a dream, they set their own limitation. Plus, most of them aren’t alone, they have a family to take care and sent the money they earn to their family. As I work here, it’s like I see the other side of the community, the community I have never understand, the community I assumed I know all about them. These women came to Pratthanadee Foundation with their burden, problems, lack of confident, some of them have been taking advantage of by their boss or even their own family and they don’t even realised, they came here seeking for help, help improving their life and the staff here helped them, little by little each day.”

“The staff and volunteers here at Pratthanadee Foundation are so friendly. From my perspective, people here see each other as family, they care for each other. This is a great foundation. I am glad to be a part of this foundation, even it was just for a short period.”