A short statement of what USAEnglish is, who started it, and the change we want to see in Northeast Thailand.
USAEnglish is a deliberately American-sounding name for a competition that is one hundred percent Thai. The name says: this is the English we want — natural, alive, told in the voice of people who actually use it, not the textbook English that has failed Thai schoolchildren for sixty years. We are not asking competitors to sound American. We are asking them to sound like themselves, in English, with truth.
The name also reflects the Cunningham family's roots — Ben, the American husband; Ploy and Meatha, his Thai wife and sister-in-law; and the three children growing up in the wedge between two cultures. USAEnglish is what the bridge looks like when you build it on stage.
Isan is twenty million people. It is the largest region in Thailand, and the poorest. English education in Isan public schools is, on average, the worst in the country. The children of Bangkok parents go to international schools and speak English at five. The children of Surin rice farmers leave high school at eighteen with five years of grammar drills and the inability to order coffee in English.
This is not because Isan children are less capable. It is because they are taught wrong, and because no one has ever shown them — in their own home cities, on their own home stages — what fluent, expressive English looks like in a person who came from where they came from.
USAEnglish is a public, cash-prized, true-story competition that puts the demonstration in front of the audience. When a 22-year-old from a noodle shop in Buriram tells a five-minute true story in English and the audience cries with her — the children in the audience watch a possibility open in their lives that no textbook will ever open.
USAEnglish was started in 2024 by Ben and Ploy Cunningham — Ben, an American originally from the Pacific Northwest; Ploy, a Thai woman born and raised in a small village outside Surin who taught herself English from cassette tapes at age nine. They are married, raising three sons in Chiang Mai, and connected by family and history to every one of the eight Isan provinces on the tour.
Ploy ran the first year alone in 2024 — four cities, ฿50,000 grand prize, all funded out of family money. The 2025 expansion to eight cities and a ฿100,000 grand prize was made possible by a small group of early sponsors, all listed on the Sponsors page. The 2026 tour you're looking at is the third year, with a ฿250,000 total prize pool, fully funded by sponsors before opening night.
It is run by a tiny team. Ploy still answers most of the emails personally. There is no chatbot. There is no agency. There are storytellers and there are people in the audience and there is, on the night, a microphone.
In ten years, every Isan province has its own annual storytelling night. The Isan Final has been televised. The 2024 grand champion, Sutthida Pansiri, has come back to judge. There is a small bookshelf in every Isan school library with the printed transcripts of the year's best stories. A teenager in a village outside Roi Et watches the recording of last year's Best Youth winner and decides she will tell her own story next year. Her teacher decides to enter too.
English in Isan, slowly, becomes a thing children believe is theirs.
Until then — the next eight Saturdays in eight Isan cities. One microphone. One real story. One round of applause for someone who has, for the first time, told the world who they are.
Five minutes. One true story. ฿0 to enter. Up to ฿100,000 to win.
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