For our community service day, we worked with an agency that helps to rescue elephants.  Many elephants are captured and forced to work in circus-like shows or used to take tourists for rides.  As their captors are not trained to work with elephants, they often use violent force to assure compliance.  The agency rescues these elephants and takes them to a park where they are cared for and live freely.

The mountain where the park is located is surrounded by farms.  It is common for farmers to burn the remains from their harvested crop and the fires often get out of control and burn down important habitat areas for the elephants.  Our first job was to help create a fire break.  Students were given hoes, shovels, rakes and brooms to chop out grass and bamboo to make a 3 meter space where there was no vegetation.  This way, a fire can’t jump the break and burn the forest on the other side

Clearing a Fire Break

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The next thing we did was plant seedlings that will be planted into the ground in the rainy season by another visiting group.  Students filled little pots with soil, added seeds and watered them.  TIS students planted over 1200 seeds!  Finally, we cultivated an area where we planted sugar cane – one of the elephants’ favourite foods.

We learned about different varieties of fruits and the scientific names for all the parts.  Students were treated to a taste of ripe mango (in season right now) and coconut after studying their parts.

Students worked very hard the whole day to help make a difference.  Each group of our students continued the efforts of the group that went before and TIS almost single-handedly cleared a fire break that could potentially save a forest!  Way to make a difference, team!

Team Thailand