Imagine you’re 18 years old - an undergraduate student studying full time in a demanding international program - and you’re asked to organize a large-scale university-level public Social Innovation Fair in the heart of Bangkok for a Thai royal foundation.

Sounds overwhelming? However, for a group of CSII students, it’s their current reality.

The project began inside the "Design for Thailand (D4T)" organization at CSII, where students were invited to work with Chaipattana Foundation. Their early assignments included redesigning elements of the Lumlooka Café experience and finding ways to help more people engage with the Foundation’s work. The students’ creativity and initiative caught attention when they pitched the idea of a small fair at Samyan Mitrtown during the MOU signing between Chulalongkorn University and the Chaipattana Foundation (Read more). That moment became a turning point.

"When we attended the MOU signing and pitched the idea of a small fair at Samyan Mitrtown, both Chaipattana and Chula’s leadership felt it deserved a bigger stage. They encouraged us to scale it up and generously offered Siam Square Walking Street as the venue. That’s how the Chaipattana × Chula Fair came about, and we’re now working to bring it to life."

⚠️ Work in Progress

Currently, the team of more than 90 students is deep in planning mode. The Chaipattana × Chula Fair, themed "The Power of Unseen," aims to connect Gen Z and Gen Alpha with the untold stories of Chaipattana’s impact - from rural health efforts to disaster resilience.

"Most people just recognize the water turbine symbol," they explained. "But there’s so much more going on behind the scenes. We want to uncover that.

We also see this fair as a long-term platform - something that returns each year and stays in people’s minds well after they leave."

But big visions come with big challenges. With only a short timeframe and most members juggling second- and third-year studies, managing such a complex event has tested the team’s limits. "This is the biggest thing many of us have ever led," they said. "It’s overwhelming, but we break things into milestones, get constant feedback, and rely on guidance from our professor and partners like Chaipattana and Dhospaak."

The learning curve is steep, but the commitment is high.

If anything, this project has become a living demonstration of what CSII teaches...

Here is what they say:

"Everything we’ve absorbed at CSII - inside and outside class - has shaped how we’re building this fair. We used a design‑thinking mindset to pinpoint the real issue: for many of our peers and the target audience, Chaipattana feels distant, and we don't know what they really do, so we reframed the brief and built the theme “The Power of Unseen.”

A systems way of working help us turn loose ideas into structure: we formed the team, recruited staff, split into departments, set responsibilities and timelines, and ran weekly check-ins with feedback.

The entrepreneurial mindset showed up in the practical parts - pitching the concept, aligning budgets, utilizing the space and collaborating with Chaipattana, PMCU, and other units, and keeping approvals and communication flowing. In practice, that meant documenting decisions, standardizing our CI and templates, tracking milestones, and defining success beyond headcount.

CSII has taught us to connect people, process, and purpose - so this isn’t just a two-day pop-up, but a big opportunity for us to learn from and build on."

High Stakes, Higher Hopes

Looking ahead, the students are most excited about seeing their ideas come to life - especially when visitors have that "aha" moment. "When someone hears a Chaipattana story and thinks, ‘Wait, I can do something like that too,’ that’s when we’ve succeeded."

As the Social Innovation Fair comes closer to launch, the team is calling on the CSII and Chula community to support in the best way possible: show up, share it, and bring others along.

Because “Your power can turn what no one sees into what no one forgets.”

Stay tuned for more details - and get ready to experience the Power of Unseen.

Follow for updates: https://www.instagram.com/chaipattana.chulafair