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To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. Socialization Program for Potential Adoptees
We conduct a weekly program at Ban Dek On Ransit Babies’ Home geared to prepare Thai orphans who are to be adopted by foreign families. The aim of the program is to provide lessons and experiences that will enable them to more easily adjust to their new environments.
Language basics are obviously important, and we teach English in a variety of ways - with games, books, stories, skits, flash cards, songs, videos, etc.
Along with this there is also the important aspect of socialization that includes excursions and field trips to a foreign family's home, a meal at a hotel, a visit to the supermarket and the airport, and so forth.
A government orphanage located at Klong five in Thanyaburi houses approximately 200 abandoned babies and young children. For several years now our volunteer staff has participated in various projects at this institution: acting as auxiliary staff to ease the difficulties caused by lack of funding and personnel, plus undertaking tasks from painting the orphans' beds, repairing and re-painting the playground equipment, planning classes and activities, to taking the orphans on excursions, and performing at special functions.
CTM Volunteers spend time at a shelter for women and children who have sought refuge there from abusive domestic situations.
Many of these young women are victims of rape, waiting out their pregnancy, while others are HIV-AIDS patients unable to care for themselves.
We visit and counsel, provide musical therapy, and utilise holidays to organise activities that make them feel special. In all our hospital visitation programs, we try to add the personal touch.
We also conduct seminars for hospital staff and care-givers.
Industrial Rehabilitation Center Volunteers from CTM regularly visit an institute that houses young men who have been injured and/or left handicapped from industrial accidents.
Before the actual class commences, Debbie and Magnus often have the opportunity for one-on-one counseling with the individual students. Everyone has a talent – and many people are happy to share this with those less fortunate . Many international students, professionals, housewives, backpackers from the US, Japan, Sweden, Korea, Canada, Denmark, Singapore, China, England, Thailand and India have joined us during their vacation for a short stint.
Volunteers contribute their time and talents to help with dental work, excursions for kids, wall and mural-painting, refurbishing beds and orphanage playground equipment, teaching art, dance, songs plus a lot of love, hugs and cuddles to those we serve.
A Pipe Dream Come True One reads a lot in the news about the human rights issue in Myanmar (Burma).
Myanmar’s population of 48-50 million includes 15 major ethnic groups, one of which is the Karens, that many accuse the Burmese military rulers of attempting to ethnically cleanse.
An estimated 120,000 refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, live in refugee camps in neighboring Thailand. These refugees struggle to survive against discrimination and the odds of finding livelihood in a new land.
Family Care Foundation helped Central Thailand Mission with a grant to supply a clean water system for deprived Karen villagers in a settlement for Internationally Displaced Persons (IDP) in northwestern Thailand.
The grant also provided for the establishment of a self-sustaining fish farm, as well as providing educational materials for a school for the children of these Burmese refugees.
Previously, the only sources of water for the inhabitants of the thatched huts carved out of the wilderness were the nearby river and the surrounding hills. The river has been used for washing, bathing and other needs. For cooking and drinking water, the villagers had to trudge up the hills, bringing back water in buckets and other containers. Now they feel "spoiled", one commented. A housewife named Myang says, “Some of us now have water right at our doorsteps.”
The water from the hills is channeled into tall tanks, which then – by the force of gravity – flows into pipes into the village. No pumps, no filters – just the use of simple, natural forces.
A line of bright blue PVC pipes snake their way through the village. There we see what the villagers hail as the biggest miracle yet – water running down from the hills, through the pipes and right into their village. Thanks to a grant from FCF, their pipe dream did come to pass.
We have also been slowly investing in their simple village school. It is their attempt to provide basic education for their children. When it rains, classes are discontinued as rain pours in through the leafy roof. To get a proper roof will require funding and we hope we will be able to assist them in the near future.
The village clinic is in the same Spartan state, from where they provide first aid and medical assistance or advice. If the problem is too serious, they have to transport the patient by boat to the other side of the river.
The needs are innumerable but these hardy folk have long lived in difficult conditions, for years even in the homeland of Myanmar where they were denied any assistance and suffered hardship under the ruling regime. For them now, it’s simply a matter of survival – in safety.
For our part, we hope to initiate self-sustaining projects which will help the villages develop into healthy, self-sufficient communities.
Supplies for Villages and Needy Communities During our travels to other parts of the country during the course of providing educational videos to rural schools, we take the opportunity to supply essentials for the communities that we come in contact with.
The Karens are a major tribe, now relocated in northern Thailand, that we reach out to.
Karens, both from Christian and Buddhist background, flee persecution and hardship in Burma to find refuge in Thailand, where they have to start from scratch, and receive little governmental help.
So on our trips to the north, we help the Karens with supplies, as well as initiating needed programs and spiritual strength and support, to help them better their lives.
Tsunami Relief Our first contact with the Karens happened right after the tsunami of 2004. A day after the waves devastated the coast of Phuket and Phangnga provinces, we arrived with a truckload of supplies, basic essentials and a team of volunteers ready to provide necessary physical, emotional and spiritual comfort to the suffering and needy.
Besides our visits to the affected villages, relief centers and hospitals, we also found communities of desperate Karens – unattended to by official government care groups whose main concern was helping Thais and Western foreigners—who had to find and live in any shelter or deserted remains of buildings left standing after the tsunami. Many had no water, no supplies, just having to survive on anything they could scavenge from the hill vegetation or around the devastated villages.
Many were hiding out in the rubber plantations & hills, for fear of arrest and deportation, their legal papers, like all the things they once owned, now gone. Some who knew of the plight of these displaced people helped relocate many to the village of Ban Nam Khem, where they are able to then rent rooms or squat uninhabited property. These shacks were hardly livable but they provided a roof over their heads, that is until the rains came. "There's nowhere else to go," mourned one Burmese squatter, as she told us of the sleepless nights and difficult times when rain would just pour in from the roof and open sides of their dilapidated shelter.
Shelter was one of their major needs. So were jobs, food, and fans, rice cookers and now with a new initiative to build a school, they needed school materials as well. Within one day of our appeals on behalf of these displaced people, we were pleasantly surprised as to how many promptly responded, giving generous donations to enable us to purchase needed supplies.
One such displaced person is Matthu, a tiny
lady who had lost two children to the tsunami, an 8-month-old
baby and a 12-year-old daughter. Her husband, who had
worked as a fisherman for nine years, lost his job as
his employer died in the tsunami. Moken Sea Gypsies The Moken sea gypsies or Chao Lay, as the Thais call them, are a nomadic tribe of people who travel and live among the islands of the Mergui Archipelago. They have settled on the southern tip of this range, on the Surin islands & islands off Ranong & Krabi The Moken originate from Indonesia.
"Moken gypsies left alone without help" screamed the headlines of the Bangkok Post, explaining that the Moken community in Ranong had survived the tsunami but many were starving and sick. Reminded by the adage "Compassion cannot pass by a needy situation without doing anything about it," we set out to see how we could help and make a difference for these folks. Calling on several of our sponsors, we were able to produce a humanitarian food shipment and travel the 700 kilometers to deliver it to the Moken. Arriving, we located a boatman who would take us to the Lao Island to bring these goods to this needy community.
The familiar sight of Moken houses on stilts, built above the sea floor, of bamboo and caryota palms, greeted us as we approached the island 20 minutes later. Disembarking, we found the little dark-skinned Moken children playing on the wrecks of boats being repaired on the beach. We were able to eventually get word out that we wanted to meet the headman of the village and then distribute goods to everyone. This was to avoid the mayhem we often encounter in such villages when everyone tries to grab what they can for themselves.
Soon, men, women and kids carried the goods from our boat, in an orderly fashion. Then they all stood and waited for each other. We took time with them along with Supanya, to find out more about them, sharing some words of hope, encouragement and a prayer for God's blessing and help in their lives. They chorused together "Amorn" ("Thank you" in Moken lingo) when we took a picture before parting ways.
Educational Programs for Provincial Schools Much of our work upcountry is in the province
of Pathumthani, as well as Rajburi and Kanchanaburi. In
order to boost the children's curriculum in these poorer
schools, we make sponsored sets of educational videos
available to each of these schools.
Many of these schools are in remote parts of provinces, along the borders, on mountains & often miles from cities. They lack amenities which are often easily supplied by companies or individuals in Bangkok eg. shoes for children, bicycles for transportation, used computers. We often work with companies who sponsor our interactive English programs along with a contribution of 10 VCD/DVDs which are bilingual edutainment, instilling wholesome moral and family values In English and Thai through stories, songs, attractive graphics, puppets etc.
We also host seminars on Child-centered Learning for local teachers teaching English, often arranged by the Education Office of different provinces.
To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. |
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Debbie with Hmong hilltribe children.
CTM volunteer Sunny with orphans.
Julia encouraging a hospital patient.
