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Thaitucker Trial

Why play the Thaitucker Trial?

In Thailand, school attendance may depend upon a midday meal.

Many families are unable to provide one. Their children may stay at home, engaged in menial work to feed themselves and their family.

School dinner costs on average 18 pence per day. Local authorities help to support some of the poorest children, but only to a maximum of about 4.5 pence per day. For the rest, the schools depend on parental contributions. Especially since the Tsunami many parents have no cash to contribute. Sometimes they can provide help in kind, or in the form of labour. A school lunch farm provides:

  • Food for the table
  • Cash to provide food which can't be grown economically
  • The opportunity for parents to contribute labour rather than cash

If the children cannot be fed, they will not attend school.

Their education suffers.

It can come as a surprise to privileged children to learn that Thai children really want to attend school - and that something as simple as no midday meal can prevent them.

Hence the Pattaya Orphanage Trust lunch farm initiative.

What is a lunch farm?

Thailand is a very productive country. Crops grow well. There is no reason why anyone should go without.

Many schools have some spare land. They can irrigate it with water from the school roof or by drilling. The children themselves can provide some of the labour to plant and nurture food crops. The result is a lunch farm.

The crops are harvested and prepared as healthy, balanced meals. The children benefit - and they stay at school.

How does it work?

The Thai charity PDA, with financial support from the Pattaya Orphanage Trust, has begun establishing lunch farms in Thai schools.

The farms produce vegetables such as aubergine, morning glory, kha na (a leaf vegetable) and mushrooms. The vegetables can be supplemented by keeping chickens, and by breeding prawns and catfish in concrete tanks.

The produce is used to provide free and nutritious school lunches during term time, and can be sold or distributed to the community during the vacations.

What are the benefits?

  • Children are fed, and so are less of a burden on the family.
  • Children have no reason to stay away from school.
  • Children are taught basic farming techniques which serve them well throughout life.
  • Communities benefit from food surpluses and from food production during school vacations.

How is a lunch farm started?

Before the farms can grow their own food, schools are provided with cash to buy ingredients for lunches. The cash contribution tapers off as the lunch farm reaches full production.

The cost of farms varies depending on the number of children involved, the space available, the exact choice of products, and the occasional need to drill wells for irrigation. A typical farm will cost about £8,500 including the starter lunches.

What is the game?

The Thaitucker Trial is a simulation of the establishment of a Thai lunch farm. Players start with a school population and with some 'starter lunches'. They can dig, plant and grow a range of food crops. They can choose to keep chickens and catfish for food. They can use their crops to produce healthy, balanced meals for their schoolchildren. They can sell excesses, or buy crops they don't themselves grow. A real-time counter takes them through the season.

If they are successful, the schoolchildren will be well fed, and the school population will grow.

If they are unsuccessful, food stocks will dwindle, and the school population will fall. A school with no pupils or lunches will close and the game will be over.

At the end of the season, the players will be shown a record of their success.

What help will players need?

You may want to put the game in context. The notes on these screens will help you. See also the Pattaya Orphanage website:

www.pattayaorphanage.org.uk

The introduction on the first three player screens also gives an overview of the lunch farm initiative for the players. You can skip this introduction, and lead them direct to the game.

The vegetables grown on the lunch farm may be unfamiliar to the children. This doesn't stop them playing, but their understanding will be enhanced if they can see (and maybe eat) the real thing!

More help

The game should be intuitive to children familiar with computer games. Remind them that the objective is to keep as many children in school as possible. The players need to feed the schoolchildren a balanced meal. Three different foods are essential for this. The children can't live on mushrooms alone!

There are three levels of difficulty. It gets tougher to meet the demand for meals.

Remind them that they can trade - sell excess crops, or use their money to buy crops they don't grow. But watch the prices, since they vary.

Two of the products can be bought and sold at a profit, i.e. traded. This in fact reflects life as it is. The opportunity to trade is deliberately not pointed out in the instructions leaving it up to the children to work out.

The whole game can take as long as an hour; or as long as it takes to depopulate the school!

What is the educational value?

The Thaitucker Trial is a valuable cross-curricular resource.

In citizenship studies, it offers a real-life context for understanding more about developing countries, and especially about self-help schemes.

In ICT, it is an example of how a computer game can be educational and informative.

In geography, it offers a snapshot of another culture, its needs and people.

In science, it presents a context for how plants grow - especially food crops.

In health education, it demonstrates the value of balanced and healthy meals.

In RE, it shows an example of practical Christian caring - the Pattaya Orphanage Trust is a Roman Catholic charity.

Lunch farms and the Tsunami

The Tsunami which struck the west coast of Thailand tore the heart out of families and communities alike. Long term infrastructure reconstruction is under way, but given the scale and ferocity of the disaster, there have been gaps left through which vulnerable individuals and communities can fall.

Children are particularly vulnerable, and there are clear signs of developing malnutrition amongst the children of the newly poor. Families without jobs have no income, and cannot afford to pay for food in sufficient quantity or of proper quality. Children in these families often come under pressure to abandon their schooling to take menial work, jeopardising their chances in the future for the short term goal of contributing to the family budget.

Lunch farms support school attendance and long-term educational opportunities.

Practical help

You and your school can contribute to the development of lunch farms. Click on the Pattaya Orphanage sun to find out more. The game shows how the return on even a small contribution will have a significant impact. Your donation will support this successful self-help initiative. UK schools could easily accept the challenge of funding a whole Lunch Farm - but even £20 will pay for lunches for one child for one academic year whilst a lunch farm is established.

You could raise this money through a lunch-based practical activity - offering, for example, a healthy 'brown bag' lunch as an option where the school meals service cooperates.

And the results of your efforts are tangible...

Just one successful lunch farm

Wat Koh Lanta School in Krabi has 64 pre-school children, 161 primary school pupils, and a staff of seven. PDA, supported by the Pattaya Orphanage Trust, sponsored meals for 100 days, enabling the school to start a lunch farm in May 2005.

Now there are two vegetable plots, a chicken hut with 200 chickens, and a mushroom farm with 2000 blocks. Eight children from different grades attend to the chicken and mushroom houses daily. This team is rotated each week. In its second season the school has added a plantation of fruit trees to supplement the children's Vitamin C.

Vegetables are grown and eaten. 10-20 kilos of mushrooms are harvested each day from the mushroom house. These are both eaten in the lunches and sold. The chickens provide protein for the lunches, or the chicks are sold.

The children are healthy and happy at school, and the school population is stable.