Q. What made you start working on educational support activities in Thailand?

 

When I was a student, I joined a study tour at a mountain village in Thailand. Then, I realized how rigid Japanese education is through communicating with Thai children who live happily in the nature-surrounded province. This experience made me think, “What is true happiness?” I got interested in educational situations in Thailand and this is why I started working at a NGO in Thailand.

 

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Q. Before the establishment of Maletfan, we heard that you have one unforgettable experience. Could you tell me about the story of it?

 

When I worked as a stuff of a local NGO before I established Maletfan, I was dispatched to support disaster recovery of Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in 2004. My mission was to build temporary libraries and create playing places for children in Sumatra. I realized the most important thing is not to simply supply materials, but also to create cozy environment for children. This can be applied to not only disaster recovery assistance but also daily educational environments. I got a motivation to create a new community which both of children and adults can interact with each other. Later, I established Maletfan with Ms. Mhai and Ms. Gip who had the same opinion.

 

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Q. What activity has Maletfan been focusing on these days?

 

Now, we focus on “Reading a Picture-Book to Children Project” as a main activity. (More information: http://maletfan.org/jp/activity/) In Thailand, it is said that there is a lower rate of reading books in children, and some children even hate reading. I think this phenomene is not because they hate reading but because there are only few opportunities for children to read good books. While there are many books in libraries in Thailand,  people do not read them. In order to tackle this issue and make a movement for promoting reading books, we organise events to promote picture books for children at many places in Thailand. For example, we held the event in 2015 at Central World, which is one of the biggest shopping malls in Bangkok. We could hold another event in Chiang Rai with supports from the Thai government. In this event, we used the special bookshelves, which can show front cover of books to attract people. Children can see the cover of books very easily and pick up their favorite books by themselves. We also collected famous picture books from all over the world. Since Thailand’s picture books tend to focus on educational purposes, which is not interesting for children, we gathered many varieties of books from other countries, and we are trying to offer their attractiveness.
 

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Q. How do you manage and operate Maletfan?

 

As I have already mentioned above, our projects are supported by Thai government and the local government. Our financial resources came from income lecture as fee from the government. We share ideas such as the new ways of making a toy for children which require simple works when we have workshops and lectures towards parents and educators. We think adults must be able to enjoy the contents at first if we want to get children interested in it. This will lead to create motivation for education. We raise operation cost of Maletfan by collecting fee when we teach what we mentioned above. While we have a membership system,  we do not receive periodic donation from Japan. Because we believe that the educational problems in Thailand can be solved in Thailand by using budgets for education in the government sectors. That’s why we manage this organisation with money received as teaching fee from the government.

 

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Q. Future activities and personal resolution of Ms. Matsuo

 

When we can get enough and stable funds, we would like to hold “study tour”. I believe children can live happily when by adults improve current stressful situation

surrounding them by creating an opportunity to broaden their fixed ideas. In the future, I would like to create an environment that people around me will live happily. I want to contribute for both of adults and children who have been taught society is imperfect but they  can achieve their dreams.

After interview

 

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< After Interview>

We were impressed by Maletfan’s great enthusiasm to try to resolve educational problems in Thailand. It is very interesting that they focus on adults as a target because the mindset of them influence children's educational environment if they want to make sustainable changes. It would be our great honor if you receive the message from Maletfan and start thinking education in Japan and Thailand.

 

Thank you so much for cooperating and having interview with Think members.

We sincerely appreciate for the cooperation.

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Maletfan Homepage: http://maletfan.org/jp/

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/MaletFan/