| Abstrakt: |
The article assesses the TUFEC training and development scheme, a community development program developed by the Thai government to address rural problems of the country. The principles of community development as a matter of government policy appear to have been accepted in Thailand in the early fifties. No national program was started at that time and the principles were applied rather haphazardly in the light of empirical experience and varying conditions. most of these initial efforts were on a very small scale. Out of this experimental background came in 1954 the first large scale program. In the year the Thai Ministry of Education in a joint venture with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization started near Ubol the TUFEC training and development scheme. The idea behind the project was to train a large body of specialists in the fields of agriculture, health, education, social welfare, home-making and village industries in the principles and methods of community development, to organize them in so-called Fundamental Education Teams, and to start a program intended to cover in the long run every district in the country with such as over-all development team. During the years between 1954 and 1960 the TUFEC program has been able to put about 250 workers, or slightly more than 50 of these community development teams, into the field. In 1959 the author of this article made a first over-all evaluation of the work and the relative successes achieved by these teams. |
