Green Alternatives Worker

Warm Heart is a grassroots organization that empowers rural Thai villagers. Working with the community, Warm Heart organizes projects that improve access to education, basic health services, and sustainable incomes for the poorest people in the Phrao District of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Environmental sustainability is of the utmost importance in all of our projects, and we must lead by example within our community. We currently live and work on the same compound at the Warm Heart farm and Children’s Home, 20 kilometers south of Phrao. The farm consists of a large vegetable garden that helps us feed our 40 kids, cash crop orchards with longan, mango, papaya, banana, and lime trees, as well as chickens, fish, and pigs. Here we also house our biochar production center. We help supply Hill-Tribe villagers with an economically and environmentally sustainable alternative to their current slash-and-burn methods of farming on the mountainsides. The biochar complements this endeavor by providing an organic fertilizer to refresh their depleted soil and provides an interesting opportunity for future micro-enterprise initiatives.

Position Overview

Warm Heart seeks a hardworking Green Alternatives worker to assist in the development of new environmentally sustainable initiatives, as well as to maintain and improve our existing programs.

Primary Responsibilities

• Manage biochar production and maintenance of kilns.
• Maintain farm records, including planting dates, seeds/seedling usage, pest control methods, water usage, growth cycles, fertilizer usage, yields, costs, etc.
• Care for farm animals, including chickens, pigs.
• Research and implement new methods to promote sustainability in northern rural Thailand
• Assist with other projects, as assigned (e.g. volunteers are required to teach English for 2 hours of each week)

Experience/Skills

• Desire to learn new sustainable methods
• Willingness to withstand exposure to and work in variable weather conditions
• Ability to think creatively and work with a diverse workforce, including Thai work staff, schoolchildren, and foreign volunteers
• Background in agro-forestry, sustainable development, or biodiversity preferred
• Exposure to carpentry or engineering is a plus
• Conversationally fluent in English

Working for a start-up NGO in a foreign country, especially one located in a small town, places special demands on volunteers. Volunteers will work with a small team of international volunteers in a Thai organization and community. The work is demanding and can prove difficult at times due to linguistic and cultural barriers.

Volunteers must therefore understand that Warm Heart requires individuals who have excellent interpersonal and diversity skills, lots of patience, perseverance and endurance. Warm Heart also requires initiative-taking individuals who are self-starting, flexible and self-managing.

Bottom line: We serve real people with real needs and we need only volunteers ready to accept the intellectually, professionally, and personally challenging work we offer. Being a "volunteer" at Warm Heart means only that you are not being paid for your work; it does not mean that you carry any less responsibility for the promises we have made to the people of Phrao.

Location

Volunteering at Warm Heart is an opportunity to immerse oneself in both authentic Thai culture and the beautiful mountains surrounding Warm Heart's location in Phrao. Local villagers will welcome you to share in the simple pleasure of day-to-day life, while Phrao's north central location provides the perfect base camp to explore the rest Thailand and Southeast Asia. Warm Heart’s offices are conveniently located just 70 kilometers north of Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city, where all the comforts of Western culture can be found.

Duration

A 2-3 month minimum commitment of 40 hours per a week is required, but a longer commitment is much preferred. You will really begin to feel at home and know your job after a few months, and Warm Heart will be able to give you much more responsibility if we know that you are not just passing through.

Benefits

• You will make a real difference. You will meet the people whose lives you are changing and the changes that you will bring will be big: jobs and sustainable incomes.
• You will leverage your university experience. It is one thing to learn about global markets or grassroots development; it is an entirely different thing to do them yourself.
• You will acquire professional skills that cannot be taught in the classroom. Every survey shows the same thing: companies think that their new employees are well educated, but lack interpersonal, teamwork and diversity skills. Warm Heart is a university of this stuff; you will return with amazing cross-cultural, multi-lingual teamwork and management skills. You will gain invaluable insight into how an NGO operates.
• You will grow. You are on your own in a strange place working with a staff of Thais on the real problems of real people. It's like human growth hormone for the soul.
• You will meet cool people. Warm Heart volunteers come from everywhere from Australia to Vietnam. You will have the chance to develop close-knit friendships with other volunteers as well as the locals.

Costs

Unlike many volunteer programs, Warm Heart does not charge a participation fee or require a donation. We do provide low cost packages that include:

• Housing: Single or double in Warm Heart house with screens, western toilet, hot water, kitchen and internet.
• Transportation: Motorbike
• Services: Document preparation and translation for visas, work permits, required health documents, visa extensions, etc.

The Warm Heart package for those staying up to three months is currently $250 per month (subject to change, of course). Volunteers should expect to spend about another $250 per month on food, gas, telephone and entertainment. How much more you spend will depend on how often you go to Chiang Mai for the weekend.

Apply online at www.warmheartworldwide.org.