BiB023: Democracy, Human Rights, and a Cat Named Pumpkin With Katrin Bannach

July 27, 2017 by Lou Pobjecky Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

As a 17 year old German exchange student in the U.S., Katrin Bannach hoped to work abroad and have a career in training. After returning home, she attended the Hamburg University with a scholarship from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Following an assignment in India, she relocated to Thailand in 2012 with her two daughters, her husband and a street-cat named Pumpkin. Now, employed by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Katrin is the Director of Programs in Thailand and Myanmar, which focuses on ideas of freedom, transparency and democracy for all of Germany and abroad.

While, promoting democracy around the world for over 50 years, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Election Commissions in Thailand have recently developed board games on democracy and card games on human rights and peace, in hopes to influence young students to get involved with politics. In association with the Ministry of Justice, these games also touch on “real-life” issues about human rights violations and what can be done to address them in a democratic way.

In this episode, Katrin not only discusses German-Thai politics, human rights and democracy, she also informs us about the Friedrich Naumann Foundation co-hosting Freedom Festival, which is a celebration of art, film and music centering around freedom. Not to mention, Barcamp Bangkok, which is an “unconference- style conference” where participants can form their own groups and discuss ideas about technology and communications.

Mentioned in this Episode

For more information on the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, please visit http://fnfthailand.org/ (Thailand) or Germany: https://www.freiheit.org/
The Freedom Festival 2017 on Facebook
Barcamp Bangkok on Facebook

Credits

I had some help with this episode: Lou Pobjecky kindly helped me with a lot of the necessary audio edits to get the file in a listenable shape. Lou also put together the cover image and quick description for this episode.

Want More?

Check out the complete collection of Brewed in Bangkok episodes. You can also contact Katrin directly at katrin.bannach@fnst.org

Lou Pobjecky

More from my site

I receive a lot of e-mails asking me which companies I like to use myself. In order not to type the same e-mails over and over, I've put together a quick list of the most important ones below. If there's something not in the list, feel free to get in touch.

Visas and Work Permits

Immigration Lawyers:
My staff handles my own work permit and visa. For everyone else, I like to recommend Pongkarn Khunphasee. She's a lawyer who's professional, knowledgeable, ethical and super easy to work with. Plus, her fees are very much on the affordable side.

Health Insurance

I use the French insurance company ACS. They pay with no deductible for all in-patient and out-patient treatments I receive. With a cover limit of $1,000,000 USD it's one of the South East Asia plans with sufficient coverage in case something really serious happens. Read about the claims I filed with them so far in my health insurance article.

Banking

Sending Money
I regularly send to Thailand through Xendpay. The fees are among the lowest, saving me about THB 1,500 on a THB 30,000 transfer. Find out more on XendPay in our detailed review.

Credit Cards
For local payments I use a Citibank Royal Orchid Plus Credit Card. This Thai credit card makes life a lot easier, saves a lot of fees and earns me 1 mile with Thai Airways for every THB 20 I spend (plus twice a year free lounge access).

Travel

Flights
While I use Google Flights for initial research, I usually end up booking flight tickets through Expedia. This ist mostly due to them having lots of special promotions in the Thai market: My last round-trip to Germany was only USD 480 (incl. fees).

Hotels
Obviously I don't need a hotel in Bangkok, but when family or friends are staying in town temporarily, I usually recommend Airbnb.

Fitness

I worked with Jamal Younis, a personal trainer who's currently working at the Aspire gym in Asoke to work out a routine that helped me lose 10kg in 100 days. You can use this form to get in touch with them.

Shopping

I dislike shopping commutes, so I try to order everything online.

Electronics and Household Items
Lazada is Thailand's closest equivalent to Amazon where I order everything from a PlayStation 4, to a dish rack and a home blender.

Groceries
With tons of companies offering virtually indistinguishable online grocery delivery, I usually just go with whoever has the best promotion.

Website

Design:
All logos and cover images used on this site and for the Brewed in Bangkok podcast were done by freelancers on fiverr.

Hosting:
Thailand Starter Kit is hosted with WPX Hosting. After testing out several specialized Wordpress hosting services I found WPX Hosting to provide the best performance and customer support in this price range.

Thailand Starter Kit