I have recently returned from a month long visit to Pattaya where I had the opportunity of visiting all of the various projects that we are involved with. Throughout this report you will find links to the photos relating to that part of the report and after viewing the photos you can return to this page by clicking on your 'Back' button.
Firstly my thanks go the all of the staff and volunteers at the Mercy Project Street Kids’ Shelter in Pattaya for their endless assistance in making sure that I got to see all of the work being done in Pattaya and in making the arrangements for the various events that we had planned but often had to be retimed for a variety of unexpected reasons. Wherever I needed to go there was a car or truck arranged and a volunteer from the Mercy Shelter to act, as a much needed interpreter.
The Street Kids’ Shelter
Christmas Day afternoon was spent at the street kids shelter in Banglumung a suburb of Pattaya. This gave me an ideal opportunity to see around the old factory building that is now home to the kids' shelter and the vast improvement to the property that has almost all been carried out by volunteers. The home is now officially licensed by the Pattaya city council to have children reside on the premises and it is hoped that in the near future funds will be raised by the Mercy Project to actually allow them to purchase the building as at the moment 50% of their outgoings are swallowed up in rental.
The afternoon itself was spent in the garden of the home where the kids delighted in showing off their talents using a Karaoke machine that a volunteer had brought along. The children did not need any persuading to take over the microphone and perform. During the afternoon the children and the volunteers enjoyed a meal in the garden and the music continued into the evening.
With so many children to care for there is inevitably the need for plenty of laundry and as the shelter’s old washing machine was no longer able to cope with large daily wash loads especially loads of nappies (diapers) we replaced it with a heavy duty washing machine and a few drying racks. The shelter is now seen as the first port of call for mothers desperate to have their child cared for and whilst I was there a 14-year-old mother brought her newborn baby to the shelter asking them to take it from her and care for it. The father was only 16 years of age and the baby was at great risk if the shelter had not been offer help to the couple by caring for the baby.
Some of our sponsors have made visits to the shelter and have been impressed with the work that they have seen being done to care for the children and become involved in helping during their visits. During my visit this time I introduced to the shelter Graham Munday from the UK who I have know for some years as our local Volvo repair specialist. Graham is also a martial arts instructor and has a good knowledge of computers. After being given a guided tour of the shelter by Fred Doell, Graham immediately volunteered to start to deal with the shelter’s computer problems and network the machines. When I last saw Graham he had spent five days reorganising the computer system and my last sighting of him was of him scrambling around on the floor replacing a motherboard in one of the machines.
Anyone who has a skill can be sure that the shelter can find a job that needs doing from painting and decorating to rewiring and plumbing. Visitors are always welcome whether just to take a look at the work with the children or to become involved for a few hours in some of the physical works that are always ongoing. Pictures of Christmas day at the kids' shelter.
Hauy Pong Children’s Home
December 27th was the day for the New Year’s Party at the Hauy Pong Children’s Home. The home which cares for more than 300 children who have either been abandoned, rescued from the sex trade, are orphans of simply from families that are so desperately poor that they are not able to care for the child is located a few miles from Pattaya and most of the children there will have to stay there until they are 18 years of age during which times they will be given some vocational training to try and help them prepare for the time they have to leave. The children do receive a basic education at the home but this falls short of the state school curriculum simply due to the cost that would be involved of employing enough teachers.
We had asked the children to decide on the format that the evening would follow and they decided that they would like street vendor type food stalls around the outside perimeter of the dining hall where they could select their food. So stalls, illuminated by coloured lights were set-up and a wide variety of food was cooked by the home’s staff and the children were able to pick and choose their food, many returning for 2nd, 3rd and I saw one small boy who actually managed a 4th helping.
After the eating had finished and rounded off with cake and ice cream the dining hall was turned into a disco. Again this was at the request of the children and for three hours the hall was filled with extremely loud music and hundreds of dancing and laughing children.
It was good to meet many of the children that I had met on my previous visits to the home and to see and hear how they are developing although of course it is always sad to realise that these kids will have to spend their childhood years here for whilst it is a very well run and the home has a loving environment it is no substitute for being in a ‘real’ family home.
We always make sure that at the end of the evening each child receives a parcel of gifts and thanks to the generosity of our supporters the amount of sponsorship received for the party exceeded our budgeted costs so we were able to add a few more items to the parcel. Each parcel contained at least two items that the child had specifically asked for, these generally being items of clothing or sporting items.
An increase in the number of children at the home has brought about the refurbishment of an old dormitory and we have offered to purchase beds some and bedding when work on the dormitory is complete. A business local to the home has also offered to assist with the bedding so we hope that between us we will be able to supply the 60 beds required. We have also introduced another of the local ex-pats club to the Superintendent of the home and we are hopeful that this group will also become involved in helping at the home, a need which is never ending when you are caring for more than three hundred children at any one time.
Scholarship Students Party
Since my last visit to meet the students our numbers have increased so it was good to be actually meet so many new boys and girls who without outside support would not have the opportunity of an education.
On December 28th at No. Seven School Pattaya, we held a party for many of the students although it was not logistically possible to have all of the scholarship students attend this one event. The students are studying at five different schools and arranging transport across Pattaya and the suburbs as well as having a teacher accompany the kids proved impossible in the time allotted.
For those that were able to attend there was an afternoon of games and competitions, music organised by Lhen Lhen and Pui then lunch, plus each student received a parcel of gifts at the end.
Two games which proved particularly challenging were picking up dried peas from a cup using only a pair of chopsticks and running across the course without dropping it and depositing it on a plate at the other end. Another, a version of the Egg and Spoon race saw the children having to hold the spoon in their mouth and carry the egg across the course before transferring it to their partner without using their hands and their partner would (hopefully) return the egg intact to the starting line.
An incident occurred during the party that illustrates how precarious a life these children live. During the party one 11 year old boy, Tanakorn, was taken ill. He suffers from Asthma and because the parents do not have the money for him to visit a doctor and the drugs for treatment he continues to suffer. Fortunately we were on the spot when he became ill and we arranged for him to be taken to the doctor and we paid for his treatment and a course of drugs. By our standards the cost
1000 Baht (£14.20) seems insignificant when dealing with the health of a child but to the families of these kids it a great deal of money that often is impossible to find.
A few days later Tanakorn had recovered sufficiently for me to take him on a shopping trip to spend a Christmas gift of money from his sponsor.
For those students that were not able to attend their gifts were taken by Pui to be given to them when he visits them at school. The photos of the students’ party can be found at this link: Students' Party
The GoPai Slum Project
The GoPai slum is located just a few hundred yards from some of Pattaya’s finest hotels and is one of the city’s largest slums. The owner of the land offered it to the city council on the condition that it was designated and official slum so would not be bulldozed away. Once all the legal steps were completed we were asked if we would assist in refurbishing an old building making it suitable for a childcare day centre. We have now been involved with the project for over a year and the childcare centre is up and running and cares for children from the slum so that the parents can try to find work. Most of the slum dwellers work as garbage recyclers or in the beer bars. The children are taught to read and write and follow a curriculum laid down for nursery schools by the Thai government. They are also taught to wash and dress themselves and also social skills that are often not observed by people from the slums through lack of being able to meet with anyone other than those from the slum.
So that we could meet some of the children and see them in the environment of the day care centre on 10th January we held and ice cream and cake party for the kids where the kids enjoyed some songs and games and all of the kids received a parcel of gifts at the end of the afternoon. It is hoped that some of these children will be able to attend mainstream education although two of the children who are badly disabled will require special needs school to help them adjust to mainstream schools. As the numbers of children being cared for increases we will look at how we can further support the work there as the bill for food and milk will also increase.
Childcare for many of the families living in the slums puts an intolerable burden on the parents or in many cases the sole parent. Work for these people is often limited through lack of education to either garbage recycling or working on construction sites and street sweeping.
I was asked to make a visit to Banglumung Hospital where an 18-month-old girl was suffering from Pneumonia. On arrival I met the mother who despite having a badly deformed left foot which was at a 90 degree angle with her right foot, swept the streets for 9 hours a day earning around £2.50 a day. Her husband had left her taking the older child with him and the mother was left alone to care for her 18 month old daughter and 11-year-old son. As the mother had to work to pay for her small room in a slum and feed the family the boy had not been to school for more than a year as he had to stay at home to care for the baby whilst his mother worked. The child needed five days in hospital and the cost of this and the essential drugs to treat her illness was 5000 Baht (£70). It is a requirement of the hospital that a parent stays with the child at all times so the mother was unable to work whilst the child was in hospital and the child could not be released until the 5000 Baht was paid.
After getting the full story verified we offered to pay for the medical treatment and take the boy onto our scholarship program. The small girl will be found a day care place at the street kids shelter whilst the Mercy Project are working with local businesses to find the mother a less arduous cleaning job and some accommodation nearer to the street kids shelter.
Slum Kids’ Christmas Party
On January 6th we held a party organised by the Mercy Project on our behalf at the street kids shelter. The party was held indoors as although the temperature was 34c this was quite cool for the locals.
Children from the slums of Pattaya were invited and many turned up with a parent. Singing and dancing plus games with prizes kept the kids happy for a few hours before they were able to tuck into the wide range of food that was prepared for them. At the end of the party all of the children received a bag of gifts and then eagerly headed for the ice cream tank that had arrived.
The logistics of getting these kids to and from their homes in the slums which are spread out over a wide are of Pattaya is a nightmare. Most of the slum families have no transport so not only is it a matter of collecting and returning the children to their home but often of locating the slum amidst an area of waste land in the first place.
