Thai Cooperative Development Project

Recently, Christian leaders at Kanto Gakuin have been encouraging students and faculty to put the school's Christian convictions to work through volunteerism and service-learning. In the late 1990s, Kanto Gakuin Mutsuura Elementary School partnered with Japan Baptist Union and American Baptist missionaries across borders, as well as local village leaders, to begin a number of development projects among the Karen people living in the remote "Golden Triangle." Many of the villages in this area can only be accessed by road four months out of the year. Most of the villages are without potable water, adequate sewage systems, and electrical power. Most disturbing is the fact that most of the Karen-speaking children in these villages don't have access to the Thai formal education system. This means that they often don't learn Thai, and can't become income-earning members of Thai society.

Seeing this need, the students and faculty of Kanto Gakuin Mutsuura Elementary School, in consultation with their Thai partners, collected enough money in 2003 to build a dormitory to house Karen children at a base camp, where they could study Thai for part of the year. This dorm is currently over capacity, serving more than 150 Karen children.

Kanto Gakuin University is also participating. Under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Makito Morishima, university students have been going to ethnic minority villages to volunteer their time and engage in service-learning every year since 2004. To this point, seven buildings have been constructed at the request of village leaders and water purification systems have been installed. In 2007, Kanto Gakuin dedicated a new building at the base camp near Chiang Mai--the Kanto Gakuin Service Learning Center. This center will serve as an accessible station for university students traveling up into more remote villages for development projects in years to come.