In this interview, we hear from Teresa Derr. Teresa is a Peace Corps volunteer working as a Youth in Development volunteer in Thailand. What Teresa shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Teresa talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about Teresa’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Tell us more about serving as a Youth in Development volunteer in Thailand?
Sure! As a YinD volunteer in Thailand, I work with the local Sub-District Administration Office (SAO) to serve and teach youth life skills, such as leadership, communication (which includes conversational English), and emotional management. There are three schools in my community, and I teach grades Pbratom 4 to Matayom 3 (4th-9th grade). When I go to schools, I usually spend the mornings supporting the English teachers by playing English-centric games, teaching pronunciation, or practicing conversations with students. In the afternoons, I lead a Life Skills Club (often with the help of my Youth Council), where we play a different game each week to practice different life skills.
On days when I go to the SAO, there isn’t really a typical day, so I try to never have expectations! I might get to spend the day chatting with coworkers, lesson planning, or working on community projects, but I might also be dragged along to whatever is happening in my community. With the SAO, I’ve found myself at the local medical center, the local temple, various festivals, construction projects, markets, funerals, etc. Being a YinD volunteer means that I have access to a wider range of opportunities to dream up projects and serve in a wider variety of ways.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Thailand?
I first heard about Peace Corps from a coworker while I was in college. It sounded like a fun way to serve abroad that was also trying to reduce the harmful impacts of some of the development strategies of the past, so I tucked it into my back pocket as something to look into. I also considered it because I love living abroad and getting to experience the world through another culture’s perspective, and being able to serve others is important to me as part of my Christian faith.
After I graduated, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so, I applied! And I didn’t actually choose Thailand, I put my name in for wherever needed me most. Thailand was one of the opportunities that opened up fastest after COVID-19, and it seemed a good match for me. I’m really glad I applied!
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation:
I am currently living with a host family at site, and I plan to stay with them until the completion of my service (less than a year to go). They’ve truly been one of the biggest blessings while I’ve been here. They have helped introduce me to many community members and events, they make me feel safe, they take me with them on their trips to beautiful parts of the country… I couldn’t be more happy!
They also cook some amazing food; I know I’m eating much better than I would if I were on my own, if only because I didn’t know what to do with half of the ingredients that my community uses/sells when I came. While the house I live in is in the center of the village, my family also owns a farm that’s a quick five-minute bike ride away. We go there on weekends to cool off in the wind. They have lots of animals (I like feeding the fish the most!) and pick lots of fresh fruits and vegetables for our meals!
4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had with community members?
To be honest, I have a really bad memory of specific events and interactions. There are several conversations, though, that I’ve had enough times to stand out. I can share one of those.
Thai culture is very food-centric. All the small talk revolves around what you’ve eaten (that you’ve eaten tends to be taken as a given, though it isn’t always in my experience!), whether it was tasty or not, who made it, and what you’re planning on eating next. This is a much nicer topic for small talk than the weather, in my opinion, and it means I have had lots of chances to try different foods, as people are eager to introduce me to their favorites when I say I’ve never eaten it before.
However, I’m always cautious when trying new food. Thai people have a saying that I hear frequently: if it isn’t spicy, it isn’t delicious! I can only handle moderate amounts of spice, so I am usually in tears a couple of bites into the amazing food my friends and family members are trying to introduce to me unless they have very specifically made a (less delicious) less spicy batch for me.
But Thai food truly is very tasty, and I’m willing to fight through at least a couple of bites of fire in order to experience the breadth of flavors they enjoy here. I enjoy these encounters with my community because food is something I have lots of practice speaking about, so the language barrier feels less significant, and I get to try new food! I also get the impression that they are proud of me, and of their community, for having a volunteer willing to try strange food, and so I feel like we are better connected, just through the simple (and yet oh so profound!) act of sharing a meal.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about Youth Development challenges in Thailand?
I think what surprised me the most about coming to work in the Youth in Development sector was the challenges I had working within the school system here. The Thai school system is structured very differently from the American one, with very different expectations for their teachers and a much looser approach to classroom management. Many of the teachers also have administrative roles within the school, and my schools also take on the responsibility of doing health checkups and opening savings accounts for their students. These additional duties on top of classes being canceled frequently mean that students are often left to their own devices (meaning they run around playing games).
Even when classes are taught, I noticed that often it would be a rote copy and memorize whatever information the teacher had written on the board so the teacher could use the time the students were occupied to work on other things. Everyone is very supportive of positive youth development and wants to help their kids grow into the best people they can be, but I had to figure out how to integrate the type of classes I wanted to teach into the framework they already had. Asking the teachers to give up some of their time to help me teach was daunting, and figuring out how to push the students to learn in ways that weren’t just copying what I said/wrote remains a daily trial and error.
6. What challenges did you face while working on Youth in Development projects?
Probably the biggest challenge was introducing what it meant to be a YinD volunteer at my site. They’d never had a volunteer before, and everyone assumed that since I was a foreigner, I was an English Teacher. Which, I’m really not! I didn’t get the training that might help me explain some of the quirkier parts of English (honestly, listening to the English teachers teach has taught me more about my own language than I could have thought!)
But what YinD volunteers do can be so vague and broad, that it was hard to explain and introduce life skills concepts in ways that my co-teachers could fully understand. The language barrier didn’t help either! But using the time they gave me in English classrooms to start introducing life skills that also happened to use English, and then branching out into camps helped me show my counterparts what I wanted to be doing. And they got on board really quick! I now have several activities that I lead, with my students, focused on improving the life skills of youth here.
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved?
As a YinD volunteer, every project that has the potential to improve the life skills of youth is my primary goal, and since that is so broad, pretty much everything I do is to fulfill that! But I can tell you a project I am most proud of.
The Youth Council in SAOs is supposed to be a chance for students to be involved in community development. Before I came to my site, my SAO had no Youth Council, and I wanted to change that. My SAO was in full agreement, and the students we have found to be part of this group of leaders in the community have been one of the projects that make me feel like I have actually helped accomplish something here at site.
My Youth Council students have become amazing leaders at their schools, regularly leading life skills clubs with me, leading activities on big topics, such as drugs, smoking, pregnancy, etc., and leading volunteer projects at their schools. It has been a continuous project over the past year, in meetings after school, in weekend camps, and in collaboration with the SAO to get these students to where they are as leaders and decision-makers, but it has paid off. I’ve seen their confidence grow, their leadership skills improve, and their commitment to improving their community increase.
Sticky Rice, a publication produced by Peace Corps Thailand volunteers. It’s a place where volunteers share their stories, advice, struggles, perspectives, jokes, and everything else that makes up the volunteer experience in Thailand. If readers want to know more about what Peace Corps volunteers are doing in Thailand, they should definitely check it out HERE!
I’m also a regular writer and on staff as the Historian of Sticky Rice, the volunteer-run Peace Corps Thailand News Magazine. This has been a fun project to be involved in, as it allows me a chance to share some of my perceptions and experiences of Thailand with others who can relate. As a regular writer, I write a column on humorous English I (or others!) find around Thailand and occasionally will write one-off articles on various experiences I have that I want to share.
As the Historian, I help dig through the archives of Sticky Rice that are on the website and share what I find with others. Sticky Rice has been around since 1978, and there are editions of previous volunteer magazines dating back to the 11th cohort in Thailand! It’s honestly inspiring to be involved in something that has such a deep history of reporting and recording volunteers’ experiences throughout the 60+ years Peace Corps has been in Thailand.
I actually wrote a more comprehensive article on eating spicy food, if you are interested in reading more of my writing!
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as a Youth in Development volunteer in Thailand?
If you love playing games with kids, you’re considering the right job! You don’t need to have everything figured out ahead of time, but if you jump in wholeheartedly and really give your energy to these kids, you’ll have a blast. But I do have to warn you, learn to be okay with making a fool of yourself! Not just in front of the kids (which happens frequently, when I try to explain a game or concept and get a sea of blank faces back), but anywhere you go!
There have been many times when I’ve been pulled into a spotlight, had a mic shoved into my face, and cameras pointed at me and I have no idea what’s being asked of me. When I mess up or misunderstand, I laugh and move on (or make a note so that the next week when it happens again I can try something different), and try not to lose too much sleep wondering what my community thinks of their foreign volunteer.
Also, always have a game (or twelve) in your back pocket. Either literally – the kids love Uno! – or something that can be played with no materials and any number of people, so that you’re always prepared for whatever your community springs on you.
9. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for a Youth in Development volunteer?
Flexibility. Adaptability. So, so often things change, get canceled, get moved, or get added last minute and you’re asked to deal with whatever the new situation is. It can be as big or as small as a class getting added to your schedule for the day, or something big like a massive project/camp you’ve spent hours working towards being canceled for one of a hundred different reasons. It can be incredibly frustrating/stressful, so knowing how to deal with that is very important!
10. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?
How hasn’t it helped me? Honestly, I don’t know what I would be doing without the training we got during PST. Youth in Development is such a broad area to work in, that figuring out where to start was really daunting. But during PST, the Thai staff gave us such a well-rounded overview of all the different projects we could do and the different ways to interact with kids that I felt prepared when I got to site; I felt like I could figure something out. And I did! Sure, sometimes the information they were running through felt common sense, or obvious, but having it laid out, and put into perspective with the objectives of our program, was really helpful.
During IST and MST, honestly, bringing counterparts who are similarly curious and seeking to improve opportunities for youth has been the way I get the most out of training that can be repetitive. The Thai staff are so much better at explaining these concepts than I am, and they have such fun examples during trainings that when I go it feels like they’re breathing new energy into the projects my counterparts want to do. I’m super grateful to the Thai staff, for everything they do to support us. It’s all invaluable to me!
Practical Tips and Language Learning
11. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Thailand volunteers?
Oof. I brought too many clothes that I don’t wear nearly often enough to justify the weight they took up. I much prefer to wear the clothes I bought here in Thailand – they’re the expected professional attire, and they deal with the heat much better. They’re also really cute!
12. How has learning the language been?
Thai is a really tricky language to learn. It has a grammatical structure that baffles me frequently, and I still fail daily at trying to pronounce the five tones correctly. It has taken a lot of effort to be able to get my skills to a point where I can be even somewhat understood – but it’s also really important for me to be able to speak Thai, because my community only has four people who can understand English semi-proficiently, and only a handful more that can understand basic English. I keep working at it, with my tutor, and getting to know students who are able to interpret my bad Thai into understandable Thai has been most useful!
I spent several months before coming to Thailand learning how to read and speak a little, and I do think that was very useful. Language is something that only gets better the more you use/practice it, so giving yourself all the time you can to improve is only going to help you! If you have the opportunity before staging to learn, take it, but don’t stress too much if you don’t. The Thai teachers Peace Corps finds are very good at their jobs!
Final Thoughts
13. Any last comments for future Thailand volunteers?
Su-Su-na! (A Thai encouragement, literally meaning fight on.) There is so much beauty in Thailand, so many wonderful people to meet here, and so many ways for you to learn and grow as a person by working through the challenges and joys the students will give you! It is absolutely worth it to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, and Thailand has been the best first post I could ask for.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Thailand Government.
