Sanpatong Experiential Education Centre

From January 4-13th of 2020, we had the pleasure of hosting 120 students from Austin High, Texas. They were a great bunch of students to work with and a getting to know them was delightful. For the duration of their stay, the students participated in Volunteers Without Borders' mushroom house project which aims to assist underprivileged local schools by subsidizing their meals and costs. They also had the chance to participate in Track of The Tiger T.R.D's Bamboo Man Challenge and Thai Cultural Heritage Challenge. The former aimed at helping students develop team-building and career fluid skills while the latter aimed at introducing them to a variety of Thai artistry such as pottery, lantern making, and pandan leaf crafts.

Always a pleasure to provide seeds for Volunteers Without Borders. Here are some benefits of mushroom houses for the schools benefitting from them in the Sanpatong area!

Volunteers Without Borders

Our mangos are thriving! We have so many weighing down our trees, we hardly know what to do with them. We've been making green mango chutney, Som Tam (Thai green mango salad), Khao Neow Mamuag (mango sticky rice), and feeding them to our buffaloes.

Did you know that mangoes and their leaves have been an important herb in the Ayurvedic and indigenous medical systems for over 4000 years? They are a rich source of potassium, antioxidants and vitamin A, C & B6.

We have been very busy setting up our new aquaponics system in our greenhouse at the farm. An aquaponics system is the symbiosis of fish and plants. The fish waste is pumped up to the plants that absorb the nutrients and the water is recirculated back into the tank. 🐟🌱🔄

Aquaponics uses no harmful chemicals, pesticides or herbicides. It’s a natural eco system and it uses 1/10th of the water of soil-based gardening.

These systems need constant testing and maintenance to make sure the fish and plants stay healthy - a slight change in nutrient levels, PH or temperature can lead to disaster! Luckily we have a great team and we are always learning a lot.

We recently had 42 Thai Scouts from the Scout Organization of Thailand ( สำนักงานลูกเสือแห่งชาติ (NSOT) visit the SEEC to try out the Track of The Tiger T.R.D Bamboo Man and Cultural Heritage Team Challenges. We were very impressed at how much the Scouts thought outside of the box, and used the tools provided to them in creative ways. We were especially surprised at how delicious their self-caught fish dishes were in the Jungle Cooking challenge. Well done Scouts!