From the very beginning I have felt welcome at the center. I felt expected and appreciated.
I had a beginning where I was ‘a lot’ alone, but I never felt lonely. All the Thai staff was very good at taking care of me, especially Sister Supaporn who was nice to call me a lot, to see if I was doing okay.

The project is very well organized and with a very clear goal. The goal of empowering women, giving them a place to grow strong and where they can be themselves and meet equals is never lost out of sight. The women come first, you never doubt that, and I like that very much.

The staff is, as said before, very friendly and many of them can speak English and try their very best to make them understandable when we cannot understand Thai.
The staff is very hard working and it is very admirable the way they ‘give them self’ to the center, they work very hard and they all seem to love it! This also means that you have to ‘give yourself’ to the center – or at least don’t come here and think you are only here for teaching 4 hours a day. There are many activities and thing you can and should help with, preparing for activities, be a part of activities, wrapping gifts etc. Things I all have enjoyed being a part of! As a volunteer you become a part of the center and not just a visitor. The center is good at not forgetting, the volunteers by e.g. always making us a part of seminars and the Wednesdays meetings. Everything there is of course in Thai, but there is always someone translating for us.
At the Wednesday meetings we always have to sing for the students. Something there is a bit embarrassing and strange in the beginning, but it quickly became something I liked: making the students laugh. ☺
However, when it is said that they think a lot of the volunteers and make us a part of the center’s everyday, it should also be said that the information level is not always what you could hope. Sometimes information is given to us very late or not at all! Sometimes it can also seem as if the information has to go through to many people before it reaches us, meaning that we sometimes hear different things.
I have mostly found the morning meetings interesting and good. I like learning more about the two centers, Thai culture and that there is time for us volunteers to share. However, sometimes the meetings are not very well organized and we get up early, ride to the children center to be there for ten minutes to hear about something we all ready know – this can seem a little point less and as if the staff are being ‘forced’ to do this and not because they have something to share.
An Irish Sister, Sister Max, was very good at setting up dilemmas concerning our work and the life in Pattaya and making us think and discus e.g. ‘Should prostitution be legalised?’ we had a very interesting discussion about that, and she really made you argue for you views. I would suggest more morning meetings like this, making us reflect about the life here and on our own views and not least being able to discus it with people who know ‘this world’.  
I was glad to find out that the center is much more than just teaching language, massage, hair dressing etc., that they also teach safe sex, have seminars about issues concerning especially this group of women e.g. trafficking, HIV/AIDS etc. and that there every month is an activity to strengthen the friendships and the skills the women all ready have. This was however, something I had to hear from my students and discover along the way. A detailed introduction to the center’s structure and the Good Shepard Sisters could be a good idea to new arrivals – I am not sure that I still know everything about the center and it can be difficult to know what to ask about. (*Red. VA – Disse informationer fremsendes på email forud for afrejsen.)
There can be no doubt that I am very proud to have been a part of this project. It is a project there makes a difference and that reaches its goal: empowering women. I have enjoyed my time here very much and there is no doubt that the women make all, the little cultural differences there is, worth while. They are so great full and love to learn. They are strong, a lot stronger then they are aware of and I admire their strength. There is no doubt that they have given my just as much as I have given them, I will miss them and being part of a real and great thing very much.

Tine Kisendal Fabricius