A New Workshop (Business)

Since my arrival at Starfish I have not done a lot that I expected I would do, but instead I have ventured a little off the road less traveled. In just the past couple of days I have created a small workshop of three people working on building Montessori tools for the classroom. Though this might seem to be a small production process, the products that we produce are all cut on a homemade table saw, hand sanded and waiting to be painted on Thursday. I am trying to get a painter hired, but it will not be until Thursday that I will have the opportunity to convince the school that the person I have in mind should be paid for the work. It took me a little time to get the workshop going because it took some convincing of the teachers and the people that pay the workers, and if that was not hard enough, trying to manage the whole workshop when no one speaks English. I have figured out several ways around the language barrier, by using small words like big, small, yes, no, and drawing pictures, but the product always turns out the way I expected it to. There is one man named P-Song who has been the main builder, and we just laugh when we do not understand each other because we have both figured out that half the time we are thinking the exact same thing. There is still a lot to be done before the workshop goes into a full on production process, but in the final month that I am here I hope that we will produce more for the classrooms. I only hope that I can convince Richard Haugland that he has the finances, the manpower and tools to make Montessori classroom tools for all of Thailand.