be forced to sell their daughters either.”
Everything was done for the benefit of the
people. Even the Mae Fah Luang Arboretum
at Doi Chang Moob started after the Princess
Mother visited this highest peak of the Nang Non
Hills, which was along the main opium trafficking
route in the area. Khunying Puangroi recounted,
“The Princess Mother visited the place and
decided to build a garden to disrupt the opium
trafficking route. When the area becomes secure,
people will dare to visit, and the large number
of outsiders would be an obstacle to the drug
traffickers.”
The garden was later expanded as the Mae
Fah Luang Arboretum at Doi Chang Moob, greeting
visitors since 1996. Covering 63 rai, it houses
a diversity of trees, some over a hundred years
old, over 3,600 rhododendron and other mediumand
small-sized plants, as well as indigenous
and hybrid orchids produced in the project’s
tissue culture laboratories.
Expanding Education
One of the Princess Mother’s aspirations is
that every staff member of the Mae Fah Luang
Foundation adopts as their guiding principle the
commitment to provide others with opportunity and
choice. Khunying Puangroi elaborated “Wherever
we go, we will try to give people an opportunity, to
open the door so they can go out into the outside
world. The world of Doi Tung was in the hills where
six tribes lived who could not speak Thai clearly
if at all, and where there was a severe shortage
of teachers. To maximize the potential of the
people at Doi Tung, we now have eight schools
in the project area. We developed a curriculum
for these schools based on what the Princess
Mother taught us. We do not aim for academic
excellence as much as to groom children to be
responsible citizens and most important to give
them the ability to think resourcefully. We spend
money generated from our businesses on things
like hiring teachers from England who have now
been with us for ten years to develop child-centred
learning. We teach children to be responsible,
not to steal or lie; simple things that the children
comply with. We give them an opportunity to learn
from real situations, say, why we must restore
forests and whether or not they should cut down
the trees they’ve grown.”
Through collaboration with the Ministry of
Education, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation has
developed a curriculum for the eight schools in
the Doi Tung area that incorporates the Montessori
approach, project-based learning and hands-on
vocational training, as its guiding principle for the
development of social and emotional skills. Art
serves as a complementary vehicle to expand
their imagination. This aims to groom the Doi
Tung youth to be citizens with values and conscience,
responsibility, initiative, self-reliance
and academic proficiency.
Khunying Puangroi added, “When these children
grow up and study at a higher level, do you
think they will want to come back to their homes?
Normally, people who are forced to live in a certain
area will move away as soon as they have an ID
card and an education. But when you ask the