We offer amazing and challenging opportunities for overseas volunteers to contribute, in a meaningful way, to a better future of local underprivileged people and to a future too, for threatened nature and animal species.

We arrange for committed volunteers to work in aid projects with local colleagues, helping the people and environment of Thailand, Laos, Nepal, and Cambodia.
OpenmindProjects is not affiliated with any government, political party or religion. It is a privately operated organization incorporated in Thailand with local partners and projects in Laos, Nepal and Cambodia.

The director of OpenmindProjects is a Swedish management consultant, Sven Mauleon with long experience from work in international organizations including the U.N. He is the co founder of OpenmindProjects. The other co founder, Thaweesilph Lunchaiapah, born in a poor rice farming village in Northeast Thailand, was the first local volunteer and a pioneer in our pilot projects, see www.ITinIsan.org . Today he is our Thai national and IT manager. Day to day operations of OpenmindProjects are carried out by bi-lingual local staff mainly coming from our own projects and trained by us.

OpenmindProjects currently supports some 60 different aid and development projects where volunteers overseas are welcome.

In 2001 OpenmindProjects, then called IT in Isan, pioneered computer training projects in poor Thai villages in an effort to see how the so called Digital Divide could be bridged. To give poor children and teenagers a chance to learn to use computers and to learn other subjects with the help of computers. See www.ITinIsan.org.

We were invited to an International Conference in Bangkok to share our experiences, see http://www.ait.ac.th/gmsarn/publications/newsletter3.pdf

And overseas volunteers already in Thailand wanted to help us.

In 2002 OpenmindProjects introduced computer and Internet based learning to Thai villages, orphan homes and schools (where teachers and education material are scarce) to inspire students to use computers and Internet to learn English and other subjects. And media wrote about us, Read Bangkok Post: Lessons learned in IT training

In 2002 OpenmindProjects started inviting volunteers to teach in remote villages, schools and orphan homes.

UNESCO recognized us, Read more
and volunteers started finding us

Read more about Volunteering on Language Travel Magazine

In 2004 OpenmindProjects started supporting responsible eco tourism and community development projects in Laos and Thailand, to help local people and to protect nature and wildlife.
See www.trekkingcentrallaos.com made by our volunteers.

In the fall of 2004 OpenmindProjects expanded to projects in South Thailand, the Satun, Krabi and PangNga provinces. In December we had workshops with local schools, and national parks. On December 26 the tsunami hit these regions. OpenmindProjects was one of the first organizations whose volunteers helped local tsunami hit schools.

In 2007 we started supporting projects in Cambodia and Nepal.

OpenmindProjects is a pioneer in arranging local teacher training workshops for Thai teachers together with international volunteers and also sending qualified volunteers to help teachers improving education at their own schools too. We are one of the few to actively y advocate team teaching as a way to improve English teaching at Thai schools.