Underprivileged Thai children are being sent to school while students and educators in wealthier countries are getting to know each other and exchanging ideas while practicing their English. All of this varied activity is taking place under the auspices of a new system of Internet-based philanthropy.
Darunee D-Pal Club was launched in April by the Education for Development Foundation (EDF) in Bangkok. This nonprofit organization is affiliated with Japan Minsai Center, which has been administering the Darunee Scholarship Fund in Japan for 15 years. The fund helps children in Laos and Thailand.
The club is a new system under which four donors form a team to support one child's education in northeast Thailand, the country's poorest region. Donations are 50 dollars per member and the 200 dollars raised by each team can pay for three years of middle school education for a child who would otherwise be unable to attend school because of poverty.
Donor team members can monitor the child's progress together by e-mailing one another with ideas and concerns.
"I thought it was a very nice idea. It is a good way for educators with similar concerns to connect with each other," said Susan Branz, an English-language teacher at Toita Girls' Junior/Senior High School in Tokyo.
Kojiro Machida, who is in charge of the project at Minsai Center, said: "The popularity of the Internet has made it possible for us to start this project. Donors can get a variety of information about the child they are supporting--picture of the child, as well as his or her school and village--by e-mail."
He believes that the D-Pal Club will promote international friendship as well, due to the high possibility that the four members of a team, arranged by the EDF, will come from different countries. They can chat with other members and share thoughts and opinions by e-mail.
Machida said that as e-mails with other donors are exchanged in English, D-Pal Club is a good tool for English education as well.
Although the project just started in April and has not been pushing for publicity, about 30 people, including eight Japanese, have become D-Pal Club members already, simply by word of mouth.
"I am looking forward to corresponding with my teammates. I'm hoping to get information about other countries and students and exchanging information with them," Branz said.
James Randall, Branz's colleague at Toita Girls' Junior/Senior High School, also joined the D-Pal Club. "I was impressed by reading the (club's) Web site and to see its dynamic quality. It's not just to the students' benefit. It can be useful for us teachers as well because we will be able to communicate with other teachers who have the same interest. It looks likely to grow," he said.
As advisers for the school's foreign language club, Branz and Randall, both American teachers who graduated from the University of Hawaii, plan to share their team's e-mail correspondence with their students to help them broaden their views as global citizens.
Branz, who taught English in Hawaii to immigrants from all over the world for more than 20 years, has long been interested in education for underprivileged children. With permission from the school, she introduced the affiliated Darunee Scholarship to her students. The students collected and donated about 750 unused or unusable kansei hagaki prepaid postcards that can be traded for stamps, which in turn can be sold to raise money. The students' contribution was enough to finance a one-year-scholarship for three Laotian children.
"We told students to do what they can. We are trying not to hinder what Susan and Jim are trying to do in our school," said Mieko Sugimoto, the teacher in charge of international understanding education at the school.
A third-year student in the school's foreign-language club said collecting unused postcards was something she could do immediately by asking for the cooperation of her schoolmates.
Branz, who participated in her first volunteer activities at the age of 12 in Portland, Maine, when she joined a project to help underprivileged children, has a deep commitment to education.
After she came to Japan two years ago, she read a newspaper article about Junaline Banez, a Canadian English teacher working in Kyoto, who had introduced the concept of internationalization and volunteerism to Japanese students. "I was really impressed with the article so I contacted her," Branz said. It was Banez who introduced Branz to Minsai Center.
The EDF organizes the Darunee D-Pal Club system with the close cooperation of 19 provincial screening committees and 2,700 schools in the northeast region of Thailand. Donations can be made through the Web site of Darunee D-Pal Club at www.d-pal.org (in English). For further information, call Minsai Center at (03) 5292-3260.
Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun
