The Photography of Dr. Jeff Harper

During the past five days Alan Morton and I took 32 high school students from the International School Bangkok (ISB), as a part of their Global Citizens Week, into a poor neighborhood of Bangkok to do a community service project.  The project involved painting a pre-school for poor children as a part of the Human Development Foundation's (Mercy Center) poverty reduction efforts in Thailand.  A number of years ago a large conference (coincidentally in Bangkok) met and determined that the very best "development dollar" was the dollar used to "keep a girl in school through the 6th  grade," the consequence of which was lowered poverty, disease, infant mortality, and the lessening of the "cycle of poverty."  In Bangkok, Father Joe Maier, an old Height Ashbury Hippy (like myself) who founded the Human Development Fooundation (HDF), realized the issue related to keeping poor girls in school longer was the "eldest daughter syndrome" -- a situation where young girls drop out of school to take care of still younger siblings while their single mother is out earning money to support the family -- and therefore become trapped themselves in the "cycle of poverty."  The pre-school we painted represents a way to keep "older" girls in schools by taking care of the young children while the older girls are in school. Our painting will help maintain the infrastructure of this useful and successful program.  This is the 17th such HDF school Alan Morton and the ISB students have painted for Father Joe over the past 14 yeas in Bangkok.

The hard working students sanded, scraped, and cleaned all the surfaces in prepartation for painting.

Once the surface preparation was competed, the paint was applied.

The school cooks supplied us with delicious Thai food for lunch.

We prepared and  painted one half of the one-room school while the the students were in the other half of the school -- then switched sides.  The 107 students of this school were very happy with the brightness and cleanness of their "New School."

It was a very big job, made harder by the complexity of painting the slatted walls in the heat and humidity of Bangkok. But, as they say, many hands made light work!

Our student painters came from 10 different countries.

This child was very curious about what was happening on the other side of her classroom!

We used sweet pastel colors to make the "Nursery School" look like a nursery school.

The finished school looked great . . . and will be protected from the elements for at least 10 years.

As always, I couldn't help myself from taking photos of amazing images.

What is it about corrugated tin roofing that evokes the image of Poverty? The view from the school kitchen.