No to plastic and yes to trees
When you travel with Intrepid in Thailand, you will be given a very special cloth bag that is having multiple wonderful impacts, like helping grow forests and benefitting women’s livelihoods! You may well ask “How so?”
Since 2006, Intrepid Thailand travellers each receive a special shoulder bag, emblazoned with the call to action “Say No to Plastic” in Thai and English. The bags are produced by a women’s cooperative, Tae Moh Hai, meaning ‘Our Friends Hands’ in local dialect. The group live in a small village, Baan Sawaii, located in Sri Saket province, in north-eastern Thailand.
The initiative was established by former Intrepid Travel group leaders, Dtor and her husband Peter, in Ban Sawaii, Dtor’s home village. The project aims to create work and income for local families and also to motivate people to understand the importance of conserving the environment.
Since the first order made at the start of 2006, Intrepid has purchased over 50,000 bags! More than 10% of the income from producing these bags is donated towards social and environmental projects in Sawaii village. One of the projects was to buy an acre of land suitable for planting trees, some of which would be used for natural dying. Before this could happen, the low-lying paddy fields needed to be raised back to ground level with new earth.
On April 9th, 2012, Dtor and the team had finally rallied enough support. Over 200 local community members and friends from around Thailand helped to provide the earth needed to level the Ban Sawaii site. Together they built a small meditation centre and planted over 4000 trees.
Their whole team would like to say many thanks to Intrepid and Intrepid travellers for your great support and generosity throughout the years. It’s fantastic to see such a grassroots project prosper and contribute to the local community with the help of its global friends.
For more information please visit www.greener-tomorrow.org and www.familytree-huahin.com.
The Intrepid Foundation – travellers making a difference
Help support many great grassroots organisations via the Intrepid Foundation, plus find out how your donation can be matched* by Intrepid Travel!
* Donations will be matched by Intrepid Travel up to AU$5000 (or equivalent) per donor and a total of AU$400,000 each financial year.
Photos: © Tae Moh Hai
After what happened to Thailand a few years ago, people should really goad into action. Change is the law of life. And we must change for the better. I salute you guys for doing this! Say yes to trees!