To: The Pattaya Street Kids’ Support Project
I would like to sponsor a child/children at the 2012 New Year’s Party
A place at the party costs just £2.50 per head.
Please accept my donation of £………….
From:……………………………………………………………………………..
You can donate to the Party either by using PayPal or your Credit Card
by clicking on the 'Donate' button
If you have a UK bank account you can also donate by cheque :
Please make cheques payable to: Pattaya Street Kids Support Project and post to:
Pattaya Street Kids Support Project, 38 The Crescent, Eastbourne, East Sussex. BN20 8PX
If you are in Pattaya donations can be left with Ray Cornell at ‘The Venue’ in Jomtien. Just put your donation in an envelope and mark it PSKSP and Ray will ensure it reaches us.
This will be the eleventh consecutive year that we have organised New Year Parties, ensuring that all of the children we are helping have a really magical day during the New Year Holiday season. The Parties also give us an opportunity to meet the children in an informal, fun atmosphere and gain a better understanding from them personally of their day-to-day needs. Again this year, with your help, we look forward to entertaining over five-hundred children at three separate parties, one party for each project area that we support and we want to share our plans with you.
Some of the worst slums in Thailand can be found in Pattaya where children consider that ‘normal’ living conditions can be as basic as plastic sheeting supported by a few bamboo sticks, or huts made from corrugated iron sheets and odd bits of timber. This year there will be three different Parties for the children to help them escape into a really fun atmosphere for a few hours.
Slum children and MERCY Home Children:
It is difficult to estimate the number of children who will attend the party but we are budgeting for one hundred, and they will be given a family food pack to take home after the Party. These are children from the various slums dotted around Pattaya. We will combine the Party for the slum children with one that the thirty kids of the MERCY Home will also attend. We are planning to hold this party on the beach.
Scholarship Students:
We arrange a lunchtime celebration at School Number Seven for the students that are on our scholarship programme. The school has about one-hundred children who are on our program and who are committed to their education; they have a Party at their school with games, and music, food and gifts which will include a family food pack to take home at the end of the day. For those students that are not able to attend this party owing to them being at different schools we make sure that those kids receive a gift and a family food pack. There are approximately another sixty children who attend different schools.
Hauy Phong Children’s Home:
There are over three-hundred children here aged between 4 & 17 who have been rescued from the streets, abandoned by their parents due to poverty, run away from home because of abuse or rescued from working in the sex trade, the home is part of the Thai Government’s Department for the Prevention of Human Trafficking For their Party the kids plan the meal, enjoy entertainment from the other kids, dance the evening away at a disco and sing their hearts out at Karaoke before leaving with a special gift and falling into bed near to midnight! You can get an idea of the children’s enjoyment by viewing photographs of last year’s party on our website; the photo of the two little boys pictured at the top this page was taken when I visited the Hauy Phong Home in January 2011 just a few days after the last Party.
We appreciate that the economy everywhere is still difficult and with that in mind we are keeping the cost for each child to attend a party at £2.50 each, although in Thailand as elsewhere the cost of food and just about everything else has risen we are confident that we can still maintain the high standard of food, entertainment and gifts of previous years within the same £2.50 per head budget that we have set for the previous ten years and any remaining funds donated in excess of our budgeted costs will be spent on additional gifts for the children.
The children at Hauy Phong look forward to the Party with great excitement for it is the one day of the year when they can forget about their problems and enjoy a hearty meal, great entertainment, receive special treasured gifts and it gives them a memorable start to the New Year by knowing that others are thinking and care about them. The Parties cost only £2.50 per head and everyone involved in organising these parties gives their time voluntarily. This means that 100% of your donation will be used for the children
We hope that you can see your way clear to making a donation and in doing so help us create a very special day for these children
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Pattaya Street Kids’ Support Project - November 2011 Update
With the continuing lack of opportunities for employment in Pattaya combined with the unexpected early start to the wet season which brought the worst flooding for more than two decades to Pattaya in September we have had many more requests to help with food for the children than in recent years. Some of the slum families on our programs gave up hope of making a living in Pattaya and returned to their villages in northern Thailand, often after getting into debt with local moneylenders when there was no money for food for the kids. With the Thai government considering increasing the daily minimum employment wage to three-hundred Baht (£6.28) this is making employers reluctant to recruit new staff for even the most menial of jobs. Some of these families will be unable to afford to send their children to school so yet again it is the future of the kids that will suffer the most.
We have become involved in a program to supply rice to badly disabled children who need a higher grade of rice that they can easily digest than can be found in the local supermarkets. We have financed five months of supply so far and I will meet with Sam the program coordinator during my December – January visit to discuss how we can be of further help. As you can see from our website many of these children are severely disabled and it is vital that they are given the right quality of rice.
I will be in Pattaya from December 8th until January 14th so I will have the opportunity to meet the majority of the two-hundred and twenty children on our Scholarship program as well as meeting those in the slums that we are helping with food, clothing and improving their home environment. In November our Chairman Kath Hutt and Secretary Joy Adams will also be visiting Pattaya so by January we should between us have been able to look at every project and meet every child we are working with.
There are going to be a few sponsors visiting Pattaya during the time I am there so it will be good to meet some of them again and also to make new acquaintances and visit their sponsored children.
We have planned the parties for the kids in line with previous years as the format has always been successful. However one logistical problem we have yet to solve is for the party for the kids at the Hauy Phong Home. We always ask the children what food they would like for their party and this year they have requested Pizza. Hauy Phong is ‘out in the sticks’ and the challenge is going to be finding a business locally that can deliver enough piping hot Pizzas to feed three-hundred and fifty hungry children. Very few of the kids have ever tasted Pizza as compared to the food they usually eat it is very expensive. As always the Hauy Phong Party will be the personal highlight of my visit as I never cease to be amazed at how happy the kids are considering their background stories and their lack of any real family.
On my return from Pattaya we will prepare a report on the visits and update everyone with what is happening with the children.
Our thanks to everyone who has supported the Charity during this difficult year as without your help we would not be able to help the kids.
Don Ford
Treasurer / Trustee.
100 Years From Today
It will not matter how big your bank account was, the sort of house you lived in, or the kind of car you drove. But the world may be a little better because your help touched the life of one child.
HAPPY NEW YEAR - PATTAYA STREET KIDS’ SUPPORT PROJECT
NEW YEAR’S PARTY 2012
