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Community Corner

Connecticut High School Student Volunteers with Elephants in Thailand

This Fourth of July, Alida Ratteray was half a world away from home, in the Hoi Ya tribal village in the jungle an hour outside of Pai, Thailand. She’d arrived in Thailand only days earlier, and would spend her first week living and working in the jungle among the tribes of Hoi Ya.

Teaching English, planting trees, and painting a school were just some of the ways that Alida was able to help the village. In return, she learned to plant rice and had plenty of time to get to know the children of Hoi Ya and share stories with them.

Alida traveled to Thailand with Loop Abroad, a summer and spring break program based in Boston that arranges trips for American high school students to visit and volunteer in Southeast Asia. Students lived in the jungle for one week of cultural exchange with the village while they studied some of the many challenges conservation efforts in Thailand face today.

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For the next two weeks, Alida and the rest of the students lived in the city of Chiang Mai and filled their days with cultural and environmental experiences, including an overnight trek and a visit to a tiger sanctuary to interact with tiger cubs and discuss the pros and cons of different models of conservation.

The students, from high schools all over the country, spent the final week of their trip living as volunteers at the Elephant Nature Park (“ENP”), a world-renowned conversation effort in Northern Thailand home to approximately 40 rescued elephants. The elephants there have been saved from abuse in the trekking or logging industries and now are allowed to form their own herds and live safely and naturally. The ENP depends on volunteers to care for these animals. Weekly volunteers feed and bathe the elephants, provide medical care, perform other necessary chores, and fund the elephants’ care and feeding through their donations.

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Loop Abroad encourages students who are interesting in working with elephants next summer to apply. Financial aid is available.

Alida will be a senior at the Loomis Chaffee School this year.




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