Projects

TBeng Community Center

The TBeng Community Center project is our newest activity.  We are partnering with Aukas to build a center on the grounds of the TBeng Primary School as a way to further engage the community served by the school.  We envision a multi-purpose facility to house visiting teachers and to be used by the villagers and the resident faculty to hold meetings, and for special projects.

Methane Generators

We’ve built about a dozen of these in Cambodia and with the hill tribe villagers in N. Thailand. Material costs about $600.

The villagers used the generator for cooking food and boiling water.  There are many reasons for our decision to focus on methane generators.

• Free fuel from the pig poop,  This reduces the number of trees that are cut down and hauled which in turn reduces erosion. This is important because the villages are virtually all in mountainous or hilly areas.
• Reduction of diarrhea and dysentery.  Babies and kids drink the dirty water, get the trots, get weak, get disease, and too many die.
  Reduction of mosquito borne disease.  If the village had pigs before, the waste would just slop over into the fields near the pen, if a pen was even used.  In the villages where we’ve installed these systems we hope we’ll find a sharp drop in diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
• A free source of very good, virtually odorless, organic fertilizer from the overflow of the system.
• Once built and three or four pigs start doing their deal it takes about two weeks for the system to charge.  After that all you have do do is turn the valve and give it a spark.

Sea Gypsies

In 2001 our group of volunteers attended a schooling program set up for the Sea Gypsy children. HIHF financed the establishment of this program a couple of months earlier. Volunteers assisted in small group teaching activities and accompanied the children on several recreational excursions.