Building and Gardening at the Single Mother’s Home – Additional Information
Building and Gardening is available to both men and women. The Single Mother’s Home is always expanding into constructing more structures that (will) act as accommodation for the women and children, office space, accommodation for volunteers and staff, meeting areas, etc. The work can be hot and tiring, but the extra hand on any building site can be highly useful. Gardens encircle the Single Mother’s Home and need constant attention. The usefulness of these gardens is twofold. One, they help supply the home with food. Two, they function as an education for the women to learn how to conduct sustainable gardening.
More detailed information regarding these projects, what to do and not do, what to prepare, etc. is found in our Pre-Departure manuals, sent to a volunteer after they have properly booked the project.
Volunteer Video
Below is a video of Brittany, who volunteered in this project for three months (then three months in another project). Some of the the things Brittany mentions are related to child care. For volunteers in this project, they’ll work strictly with building and gardening. The video does, however, provide a a good example of what the environment of the Single Mother’s Home and some of the types of responsibilities that volunteers in this project may have through the duration of their experience.
Volunteer Transportation
Airport pick up, the city tour and the transportation to and from the cultural show and dinner are covered in the project fee. Friends For Asia staff also sends volunteers and interns to seek medical assistance in non-emergency situations. Obviously, in the case of an emergency a proper ambulance would be called and used. A volunteer will have to cover the cost of their own transportation if they make multiple appointments to see a doctor or dentist.
Volunteers in the Single Mother’s Home Volunteer Projects are responsible for their daily commute to and from the Volunteer House and their site The Single Mother’s Home is located in a beautiful area, but far enough away, that it requires the use of local transportation. More details are listed below, but expect to pay anywhere between $1.50 – $3.00 per day for transportation.
Transportation by SongThaews (Thai style mini-busses) are normally 20 Baht (roughly 70 U.S. cents) per ride. Therefore, most volunteers spend around $1.50 a day on transportation to and from work. Tuktuks (three wheeled, motorized rickshaws) are more expensive, but faster. A regular priced ride in a tuktuk is about 50 Baht ($1.60 USD). On your first day of your project, the volunteer coordinator will escort you to your site and introduce you to the administration at the home. Volunteers travel with the coordinator on that day by local transportation in an attempt to teach volunteers how to get to their project site and back by themselves on the following days of their volunteer service.
