February 9th, the secret was revealed: we are going to Bangkok for the field trip! We had been waiting for this moment since we started and sooner than I expected, here it was. After the presentation of the field trip I realised this was the end of the course, and that all we had been doing until then, was partly to prepare us for the amazing experience we had ahead of us. I was really exited about it, and I knew that until we arrived, it was going to be 2 months of hard work. Indeed it has been two months reading as much as we can and finding out as much about CODI, Baan Mankong and Bangkok. Two moths of group-work and meetings; of brainstorming and discussions for our pre-field presentations. Two months of filling the gaps of the information we had with assumptions that hopefully we are going to contest with the reality on the ground. A reality that is completely unknown for me, as it is going to be my first time in South- East Asia. I can’t wait to see how that feels.

We have the amazing opportunity to hear from first hand about this amazing ambitious national program.  According to our information, Baan Mankong was launched in 2003 for upgrading and secure tenure, solve problems of settlements and human security for poor communities in all Thailand. The program has set a target of improving housing, living and security of tenure for 300,000 households in 2,000 poor communities in 200 Thai cities within 5 years. The numbers are impressive…Beyond these outstanding numbers, there is a reality that we are going to see with our own eyes, and judge with our hopefully critical minds. But this reality is also going to be explained to us by not only by the ones in charge of the program, CODI, but also by different communities which are in different phases of the Baan Mankong program and that have all kinds of experiences and results. I hope that gives us some insights on why, even being apparently very successful, it is still not scaling up.

However ambiguous that concept is, we all acknowledge we are not only talking about numbers. I hope our experience in the field will help us to understand what the cracks in this program are, why are they taking place, where, and hopefully how we can set up our strategies in our sites that, when tied together, will try to improve or find different ways to deal with the problems of the communities and fill a little bit those crack we found. It is going to be 16 days of intense work in hard conditions. I looked at the weather forecast and we are expecting around 40º and 70% of humidity. The good thing is that after these 16 days, we will head for 3 days to an amazing paradise island with most of the BUDDies. I think we’ll deserve the small prize, if we survive the Bangkok experience! To be continued in Bangkok…