Learning to dream bigger
In the previous posts, we have seen how Phuket Has Been Good To Us began, what the Coconut Club is, and the quiet, caring work the teachers do. For this final post of the series, we look at where all of that leads: the futures it opens up for these children.
When Jerlin, the senior teacher, asks her younger students what they want to be when they grow up, the answer is often the same: "Teacher, I want to work in 7-Eleven." It's an honest answer, and there's nothing wrong with it. But it also shows the problem. Many of these children have simply never seen anything different. They don't imagine scholarships, or university, or working while they study, because no one around them has done those things. Their world of possibilities is small, not because they lack ability, but because they lack examples.
So a big part of the work is widening that world. The foundation takes the children on field trips to hotels, where they see the kitchens, the spas, the swimming pools, professional environments most of them would never otherwise enter. One child said afterward: "Teacher, without the foundation I would never get to a five-star hotel like that. What are the chances I would see a villa like that?" It sounds small, but seeing it is the first step to believing it's possible.
They also bring in people who've walked that path. Once, a head chef from one of the big hotels came to speak to the children. He had grown up going to a temple school, had once walked to work in borrowed shoes, and had taught himself English. Now he runs a hotel kitchen. His message was simple: "If I can do it, you can do it." That's the kind of example that changes what a child believes is possible for themselves.
And it does happen. There was one girl whose family Jerlin came to know before COVID. She began attending English classes at the age of seven, during a time when the foundation also taught math and science in English. She ended up winning a scholarship to a well-regarded school, into their science and maths program, something that simply wouldn't have happened without those years of support.
Another former student of the Kamala school, Songglod Rattana, known as Amas, won a scholarship from the King's Fund Foundation, studied Tourism and Hospitality at Rangsit University in Bangkok, and graduated with top honours. Today he works for Club Med, first in Phuket, then Indonesia, and now in Japan. Amas credits his love of English, and his confidence with people from all over the world, to his years learning with Phuket Has Been Good To Us's teachers.
On an island that runs on tourism, English is often the difference between a job with a future and a job without one. HR teams from the big hotels have even come to the school to show the children, plainly, the jobs available to those who speak English, and the ones available to those who don't. The message lands.
But really, it all comes back to one phrase the teachers kept using: dream bigger. Giving a child the tools, the examples, and the belief to want more than they thought they were allowed to want. That is what your support makes possible.
Phuket Has Been Good To Us provides free English education to underprivileged children in Kamala and Kalim. To learn more or support their work, visit phukethasbeengoodtous.org.
Photos courtesy of Phuket Has Been Good To Us.
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