My Nonprofit Reviews

As someone who has worked in the non-profit community in the states for the past six years, I was very impressed by my experience with Mundo Exchange. I loved that Mundo was a small organization, the size ensured a more personalized experience and also meant that my volunteer donation went straight back into the local community. Nalinrat, one of the local Thai hosts, was a wonderful guide as we traveled through local markets, spent a night at a Wat, and even made a trip to another village to meet her family! My time in Bueng Khan was a perfect balance of travel to local attractions and experiencing everyday life in a small village while completing volunteer work. I would highly recommend the Mundo program to anyone who would like a personalized volunteer experience working closely with local people and organizations!

I was an intern with Mundo Exchange for two months in 2009. I lived in Bueng Khan and helped to open a Cultural Center for the local Isaan community. As the project was just beginning there was a lot of infrastructure that needed to be put into place, from developing goals for the center to painting the floor! I was largely able to design my own goals and projects, I ended up focusing on organizing and inventorying the center’s donated artifacts and it’s collection of photos. I also was able to help build the center’s first ‘exhibit.’ To give an example of how a typical project evolves- we first traveled a few blocks away to the home of one of Nalinrat’s relatives, where we went to the back yard and cut down 20ft bamboo stalks with a machete and saw. We then drove 20 minutes to someone else’s backyard to barter for some palm fronds. Next we enlisted a neighbor (who worked on the sidewalk next to the center making baskets by hand) to help construct a model hut inside the center using our materials. The whole project, which would have taken a day and a trip to Home Depot in the states, took several weeks and the help of many community members…and was much more rewarding and fun as a result!

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