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The Pattaya City Expats Club decided that as part of its mandate to help people it would provide support for improvements to the Baan Neon Plab Wan school .
This Thai community school providing education for children of all ages, sexes and faiths was originally built to accommodate 18 people.
Growth and grants to provide extra classrooms raised its capacity over the years to around 400 children, but now it finds it has more than 1,300 students.
Obviously this is causing many problems, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate canteen facilities, problems with adequate sanitation not to mention many specialist classes, e.g. language laboratory, computer room, whose equipment has fallen into disrepair.
Having committed to assist where possible, but also being aware that funds are limited as all donations will come from members or other supporters, The Pattaya City Expats Club decided that it would be good to send a delegation to visit the school, see the problems first hand and see which improvements were the priority and which were affordable. The Principal of the School concurred with this idea and warmly welcomed us to come.
So it was on an early Wednesday morning in late January that over 20 club members including our Chairman Drew Noyes, met in Pattaya and proceeded in convoy to the school, which is situated in a small community some little way out of Pattaya on the far side of the main highway.
 Not being sure of it’s exact location, we proceeded cautiously up a very busy Soi (minor road), but in fact found it very easily due to the very large welcome board (see above) that the school had very quickly erected.
We were in fact made to feel like honoured guests with tables laid out in the main quadrangle for us to eat a welcoming meal, and a loudspeaker system already set-up so that the principal could address us.
After outlining the scale of the problems, which was also presented to us all in the form of a well prepared pamphlet, we were then given a tour of the school so that we could see the areas most in need for ourselves.
We were first s hown the school canteen where due to the very limited size the pupils have to eat in shifts with some having as little as 10 minutes to consume their meal.
Next to this was the toilet block, also clearly in need of improvement and enlargement.
After that we visited various classrooms including one right next to the canteen where the adjacent noise clearly made teaching very difficult.
Every class we visited warmly greeted us, including a greeting in English from all the pupils.
We also saw the language laboratory where the tape equipment had ceased to function at all several years ago, and the computer room where only 6 of around 30 computers were still in working order.
After concluding our tour, we had some further discussions with the principal and then decided that we would have some further debate amongst ourselves about what help we felt we would be able to provide.
Some of our delegation with experience in the building trade also volunteered to revisit the school complete with measuring instruments and try to determine what additional buildings could be constructed on the existing site and also calculate a cost estimate for these.
 As an initial gesture however the club immediately decided to grant the funds required to repair the equipment in the language laboratory as we felt that learning English was an increasing need for all Thai children and was something that we as an Expats club should actively support.
We have set up a small committee to further consider this work and its decisions and actions will be the subject of future reports.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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