Chiang Mai International Rotary Club will have a booth at the CityLife Garden Fair at JJ Market on November 21 at 10 a.m. Members are urged to donate goods for sale at the event to raise funds for the club. Books, clothes in good condition and other items that would sell well are requested from all members and friends of CMIRC. Members who wish to man the tables are asked to contact Secretary@cmirotary.org for more information. Temporary work permits will be available for those who run the tables. Please bring any items you have for sale to the Tuesday meetings from the 3^rd of November onwards.

 

The CityLife Garden Fair at JJ Market is a popular annual event in Chiang Mai that starts at 10 a.m. and runs through the day. There are many booths with handicrafts and other interesting items, second hand goods and much more. Top restaurants in town have booths at the fair offering delicious food for reasonable prices and live music and entertainment as well as raffle prizes, silent auctions and tomboli prizes are there for the lucky winners.  If you are in Chiang Mai on Saturday November 21st, we hope to see you at the City Life Garden Fair.

 

Submitted by:  

 

Shana Kongmun 

Champion, JJ Market Fund raiser

We are in the final days of a fundraising campaign to help the Mae Tao Clinic.  Only a week to go!  Please participate with your generous donations and by sharing this information with your friends who are compassionate and caring people.

 

Located in Mae Sot Thailand, right on the border with Burma (Myanmar), the Mae Tao clinic serves between 300 and 500 Burmese migrants every day.  These people flock to the clinic for medical care that they cannot receive elsewhere on either side of the border. 

 

Chiang Mai International Rotary Club (CMIRC) and Estes Valley Sunrise Rotary Club (EVSRC) (USA) are raising money to help finance Mae Tao Clinic’s new Waste Water Management System. (Below please see the article “Mae Tao Clinic Update”).   We are raising the money through a Rotary Foundation Global Grant.  Rotarians will immediately understand the choice of this mechanism. (See GG1634691).  For those of you not familiar with Rotary, the global grant allows us to leverage the credibility and the power of Rotary.  For example Rotary District 5440 (USA) has pledged to match the 1^st $10,000 USD raised by EVSRC and we are asking The Rotary Foundation to match all the funds raised, including the $10,000 match from Rotary District 5440.  Our total goal is $47,000.  

 

Rotarian, Jerry Nelson is running a crowd funding campaign. All proceeds go to this grant as well.  You can donate at https://www.youcaring.com/manage-fundraiser.aspx?frid=448721   This campaign will end on 18 November.

 

Thanks to the generous donation of ฿50,000 ($1,368 USD) from the Chiang Mai Expats Club and the generosity of many individuals CMIRC has pledged $4,500!  $3,500 will be transferred to EVSRC for inclusion in the grant. $1,000 will be sent directly to the Rotary Foundation.  EVSRC has raised $6,000 from within their own resources and has pledged another $500.  In these last days we still need to raise more money and we need to do it quickly.  The fund raising campaign ends on 18 November!   Will you help? 

 

If you are in Thailand contact Jerry Nelson, CMIRC at secretary@cmirotary.org or 089-556-4293.  All funds will be given to CMIRC where it will be included in the the club's contribution. 

 

If you are not in Thailand you may donate at https://www.youcaring.com/mae-tao-clinic-448721.

 

 

Mae Tao Clinic is in the last stages of completing construction on their new campus.  The new campus is badly needed for many reasons such as capacity, cost, health and flooding at the old campus.  Many major donors have chosen to put their money inside Burma (Myanmar) making fundraising especially difficult, despite the fact that most Burmese are wary of returning home. The waste water management system is absolutely critical. Its cost is 4.7 million Thai baht, the first 3 million was donated by a private donor leaving a shortfall of 1.7 million baht or $47,000 USD.   Please help us finish this one!

 

Working again in cooperation with the Hor Phra School in Chiang Mai and Kru Payu’s Swim Program at Bronco Kids Pool, the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club is continuing its sponsorship of the children’s water safety pilot program. This program is designed to address the problem of drowning deaths in Thailand.  Drowning is the single leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 15 in Thailand.  The Ministry of Health estimates that there were almost 1300 children drowned in Thailand last year.   CMIRC is sponsoring four pilot swim instruction/drown-proofing programs to learn the most effective ways to address this problem. 

 

Each of our pilot programs will focus on teaching children basic survival skills in the water.   Our target audience will be non-swimmers whose families do not have the means to pay for private lessons for their children.   The Chiang Mai International Rotary Club will provide all of the equipment that the children will need for these programs, including swimming suits, caps, towels, goggles, etc.  We will also pay for the swimming pool rental and for the swimming instructors (there will be both male and female instructors).  Each of the pilot programs will use four swimming instructors under Kru Payu’s supervision to teach basic water survival skills to poor children.  We will use differing schedules, locations, and age ranges for each of the pilot programs in attempt to learn the most efficient way to “drown-proof” children.

 

Our first pilot program was conducted Monday to Friday, October 5 to 9, 2015 from 8am to 10am each day.  We taught 38 seventh graders (12-13 years old) from the Hor Phra School.  The program consisted of 5 two-hour sessions for each student with four instructors teaching and evaluating progress.  All students who began the course were non-swimmers and therefore at risk of drowning   All of the students successfully completed the program and the final evaluations showed they had all learned appropriate water survival skills.  Each student received a formal certificate of completion and school officials were informed of each student’s progress.

 

Our next pilot program will work with the same age group from the same school, but will use an extended afternoon schedule for instruction.  Students will complete their ten hours of water safety training during ten weeks, meeting at the Bronco Kids Pool with four instructors weekly from 1:50pm to 3pm from November 17, 2015 until January 18, 2016. 

 

Future pilot programs will focus on younger children at different city schools and perhaps try a weekend schedule and a school vacation schedule as well as different pool locations.

While we hope to greatly expand the local CMIRC water safety program and to work with many more children throughout Chiang Mai Province, our committee’s long-term goal is to develop a model or models of instruction that can be taught to swim instructors in all regions of Thailand.  We hope to work with Rotary Clubs and other service clubs to identify and sponsor swim instructors and swim programs that could provide water safety instruction for poor children.  We are planning to raise funds for the development of a course focused on “teaching children water safety and water survival.”  We would hope one day to offer this course here in Chiang Mai to those swim instructors nationwide, who have demonstrated their desire to help poor children and who have the support of their local Rotary Club or other recognized service organizations to develop programs such as ours in their communities.  

 

Submitted by: John K. Schorr

Chair, Children’s Water Safety Committee