News arrived in the last few days that 'Pod' the little street kid that we first met when he was living on the streets of Pattaya on Christmas Day 1999 and his wife 'Min' are now the proud parents of a baby boy, 'Noah' born on March 10th at 04.33 hrs
And so yet another chapter in 'Pod's life begins
Yesterday and today I had the opportunity to visit with the students we sponsor here, as well as have time at the day care center run by the charity who help get me around to see the students.
Yesterday three of the four students met Liz, Lhen and I at the ritzy new beach-side mall, where they'd selected bowling as their "treat". None of them had bowled before and I hadn't in so long that there were any number of gutter balls (with much laughter and chiding) and no score above 85, as I recall. Suchip, our most somber and introverted student actually had the high scores... and I only deliberately threw a few balls away, too! more:
We often receive interesting emails from sponsors but this one stood out so much that we felt it should be given a wider readership. It is reproduced here with the sponsor's permission:
21st February 2010
I would like to share with you an experience I had yesterday . . .
One of the gambling meccas in the US is in a town called Atlantic City, New Jersey. It is approximately 125 miles from New York City, where I reside. (It’s sort of like Las Vegas on the East Coast.) In any event, I go once or twice a year to have fun and good food with friends and, truth be told, I like to spend some time shooting dice. J My annual trip was yesterday and I was keen on showing my friends the photos of Nirod that you were kind enough to send me. (I think I might be able to get some more sponsors for you, by the way, but that’s another subject.) Once of my friends (a young Taiwanese guy -- the MBA graduate business kind of guy) asked me how much it cost to sponsor Nirod. I told him about $103.00 per annum given the current GBP/USD exchange rate. He thought for a moment and said to me: “Stu, you think nothing of putting a couple of thousand dollars at risk playing dice and you think nothing of spending a couple of hundred dollars for a nice dinner in New York City. You can well afford to take on more kids.” I said sure and really didn’t think much about it at the time, primarily because those little red cubes were about to be passed my way. On the drive home in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I did think about it and, to borrow a term I have heard countless times from the lips of a dear friend in AA who has been sober for nearly 28 years, I had my “moment of clarity.”
So, Don, if it’s fine with you, I would like to commit to sponsoring three more children. I would like to take on the three children whom you determine are now most in need and most at risk. I have a preference for sponsoring boys, but would be more than happy to sponsor regardless of gender. Just give me the three names and I will take care of it via PayPal tomorrow.
I look forward to hearing from you and I thank you again so very much for giving me this opportunity to be of help.
Kind regards,
I guess that every kid remembers the first fish they caught and when the fish was almost as big as you then that memory tends to stick in your mind, and so it was for a couple of our sponsored students.
The boys' sponsor Richard was visiting from England for a few days and as it was Praeme's birthday Praeme was give the choice of where they should go, Praeme chose fishing and along with fellow student Pipat and sponsor Richard they took themselves off to a fishing park in Pattaya where they caught a lot of very large fish. A few fish found themselves on the supper table that evening which rounded off a memorable day for the kids and their sponsor.
Back in December we accepted a very generous offer from Ray Cornell of the Venue, Jomtien, Pattaya to become involved in a fund raising effort for our charity.
Since then the Venue has put on a series of Sunday night shows which have raised over 100,000 Baht for the kids we are helping. Ray's generosity in getting involved and producing and presenting his spectacular shows have contributed to the present grand total of more than 215,000 Baht raised since December by the Pattaya fund raising initiative of Gay Ting Tong's website members.
Ray also helped us on the Hauy Phong TV set project that was the initiative of the members of Gay Ting Tong website whos forum members sourced and delivered new TV sets and DVD players to the 300 plus children at the Hauy Phong Children's home near Pattaya.
A very generous bequest of £2000 from the late Brian Eames the well known UK children's entertainer and member of the Magic Circle has been received and will make a huge difference to the children that we are helping.
Brian was a frequent visitor to Pattaya and made a number of visits to the slums to meet and entertain the kids with his magic. The kids always enjoyed his visits and Brian often said the visits to the slums were the highlight of his trips to Thailand.
With the new school year starting in April we have a number of children who need sponsorship to be able to attend school. Whilst schooling in Thailand is free the children have to supply their own school and scout uniforms, school book and meal and also have the money to pay for their travel to school.
During 2009 we have lost a few sponsors who had to withdraw from the scheme owing to financial difficulties so we are looking for sponsors for more children than we would usually have at this time of year.
The cost of sponsorship starts at £60 (sterling) a year and a child on the scheme also has access to a trained counsellor if they need help with any problems either at home or at school. Regular meetings are held with our student to see if the require any extra help in the way of clothes or food and if so thee cost of these can be met from the charity’s General Funds.
If you are interested in learning more you can ‘meet’ the children who need sponsors here and if you have any questions we will be pleased to answer them for you.
As many of you will be aware, the TingTong forum has been raising money for the Pattaya Street Kids Support Project charity, and recently presented over 160,000 baht to Don Ford, the founder of PSKSP. Don asked the forum if we would take 50,000 baht and on behalf of PSKSP buy items that they specified for the Huay Pong Children’s Home. more
As always the New Year Party for the 300 + kids at the Hauy Phong Children's Home was a great evening as these photos show:
I have recently returned from five weeks in Pattaya where I had the opportunity to visit most of the projects that we are involved in funding. As is usual with making arrangements in Thailand some things had either to be changed or cancelled at the eleventh hour but generally everything ran smoothly thanks to Liz, Lhen Lhen, Sam and Boonying at the Mercy Project who did their utmost to ensure that I was where I was supposed to be.
As always the highlight of the trip was the New Year’s Party at the Hauy Phong Children’s’ Home where three hundred and forty-five children enjoyed the New Year’s Party on December 29th. The children were asked to create the menu which this year included Shrimps, Eggs, Noodles, Rice, Beef, Pork, Crêpes and Ice-Cream, so nobody went to bed hungry although quite a few were seen making return visits to the Crêpe and Ice-Cream stalls. Also this year the children had asked that the music for the disco be played by kids from the home where music plays a big part of their leisure time, so after two performances of dance by some of the younger children and a short musical tribute to the King of Thailand the dancing began and for three hours the kids really enjoyed themselves.--more
We accepted very generous offer by Ray Cornell of Pattaya's leading cabaret showbar 'The Venue' to raise funds for the charity and this video which is played nightly to audiences is raising considerable funds for the charity.
We were delighted when we were approached by Paul the owner of a website dedicated to providing information for visitors to Thailand suggesting that he try to raise some funds for the PSKSP charity. Since then the seed of an idea has grown into a fund-raising campaign to be held over the Christmas / New Year holidays.
Members of the website visited the Hauy Pong children's home and we asked Ian of Memories Music Bar (MMB) in Pattaya who was one of the people on the visit for his impressions:
During November 2009 UK sponsor Richard stopped of at Pattaya to visit his two sponsored students 'Praeme' and 'Pipat'. 
25 September, 2009 – First Student Visit This Trip: Tanakorn
Although “sponsorship” of a child through the Pattaya Street Kids Support Project normally only involves a nominal yearly payment of tuition – something satisfying enough on its own – there is a somewhat hidden benefit to being involved, and that is the gift of being able to actually MEET your students; something that is often the highlight of my visits to Thailand. The Project’s “people on the ground” in Pattaya at Mercy Center do their best to accommodate sponsor visits, and it’s something I am very grateful for.
Today was my fourth visit with Tanakorn, one of the students sponsored by my family. Although he’s always been pleasant, polite and personable it’s been somewhat of a challenge to get Nuk (pronounced like the first syllable of “nuclear”) to smile much, but all that was to change this time.
Coming out of the larger building behind the raised “gazebo-type” covered area in his neatly pressed Boy Scout uniform, he spotted me inside the van as he approached and suddenly just burst into a big smile, the likes of which I don’t ever remember seeing before. It certainly made me feel like a million dollars, I’ll tell you. He did the traditional respectful “wai” gesture for me, Liz and the others, naturally, and then clambered into the van.
He continued to do the shy, dipping of the head gesture he often does in uncertain situations, but he was genuinely a happy guy. .................full story & photos http://pattayastreetkids.homestead.com/tanakorn_story_2009.html
October 2009 update on the situation in Pattaya.
With the lack of tourism caused by the world financial crisis combined with the political unrest in Thailand this year has been particularly difficult for families living below the poverty line. The adults and sometimes even the children of many families work in the construction and tourist service industries both of which have been badly hit resulting in unemployment for many.
We have received many more requests during this year for help in funding children’s education, for extra clothing and food and also for medical treatments. We have tried to assist wherever possible but with our own charity suffering, as have many others, from a reduction in donations we have had to make some difficult decisions as to where the money was spent.
We now also have the website address: www.slumkids.org.uk as a few people had trouble recalling the main address; either the new address or the original website address can be used as either will take you to our website.
Some of our sponsors have given extra assistance for their sponsored student where needed and we are extremely grateful to them for their concern and support in helping ‘their’ child through a difficult period.
This year I will be visiting Pattaya from 16th December through to January 17th and hope to be able to meet all of the one-hundred and twenty four children on our scholarship scheme as well as the other children from the slums of Pattaya who we are helping to support in various ways, in addition to visiting the Hauy Phong Children’s Home where there are more than three-hundred children being cared for. The visits will also provide first hand information on the various projects we are involved with and to see how they have progressed since my last visit in February.
We are very grateful to Liz Shepherd, Sam and Lhen-Lhen of the Mercy Project who are our eyes and ears on the ground in Pattaya for giving up so much of their own free time to administer the scholarship scheme, to visit the slums, liaise with the schools, and visit the children at home and to take care of visiting sponsors. For them this has been a very busy year and many sponsors have received reports from Liz of her home visits along with photos of both the kids and their homes. With over 120 children on our scholarship program scattered in homes all over Pattaya this has been a ‘labour of love’ especially when we remember that many of these slum dwellers live in unnamed streets with only the vaguest of directions as to how to locate them. Often, when the slum is located, many times it is a matter of trudging around in mud and rubble to reach the home. Here we must also thank Liz’s personal driver Boonying for his never ending patience in trying to locate the slums and his own involvement in not only helping the kids but ferrying visiting sponsors here, there and everywhere to make sure they meet their students. The home visits are an ongoing project and all sponsors will in time receive home visit reports on the kids.
We will be holding the New Year Parties again this year and we hope that with your support they will, despite the downturn in the economy, be as successful as in previous years. As usual we will prepare and send a report of the visit on my return in January and if any sponsor wishes to send a Christmas / New Year card to their sponsored child then providing we have it prior to December 16th we will be happy to deliver it to the child personally.
You can download the New Year Party appeal and sponsor form from here:
Our Thai colleague Sam at the Mery Centre in Pattaya is an important part of the team working with us on the school scholarship scheme. Sam liases with the schools, visits the students at home and acts as interpreter and translator on our behalf.
We were delighted when we heard that Sam was getting married and on 18th October Sam married his fiancee "May" from Maysiyanee at the Mercy Centre. We wish them both every possible happiness for the future.
HAPPY NEW YEAR with the Pattaya Street Kids’ Support Project
For the last nine years we have organised New Year Parties, ensuring that all the children we are working with 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. This year, with your help, we look forward to entertaining over seven-hundred children at four separate parties, one party for each project area that we support and we want to share our plans with you.
There are some of the worst slums in Thailand in the Pattaya area, 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 & odd bits of timber. There will be two different Parties for the Slum Children to help them escape into a Party atmosphere for a few hours.
KO-PAI SLUM: This years Party at the Go-Pai Slum will be the second since we extended the day care centre where eighty vulnerable under five-year olds can now attend the centre, eliminating the risk of harm while their parents go to work. Other children from the slum are also invited to the Party and we expect about one-hundred slum kids to attend.
SLUM CHILDREN: It is a challenge to gauge the number of children so 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 smaller slums dotted around Pattaya
SCHOLARSHIP STUDENTS: A big lunchtime celebration is held at one of the local schools for the students that are on our scholarship programme. The school has about ninety-seven children on our scholarship program who are committed to their education and they have a Party at their school with games, music, food & gifts which includes a family food pack to take home at the end of the day.
HUAY PHONG Children’s Home: There are approximately three-hundred and fifty 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. For their Party they choose a meal (last year it was seafood and noodles with chicken!), enjoy entertainment from the other kids, dance the night away at the disco & sing their hearts out at Karaoke before leaving with a special gift and falling into bed at midnight! You can get an idea of the pure joy of the children by viewing photographs of last year’s party on our website at http://pattayastreetkids977.fotopic.net/.
Costs have risen in Thailand during the past year owing to both the political unrest in the Kingdom and the crisis in the world economy both of which have shattered the tourist trade to Thailand. Most noticeably rice has seen a huge 30% increase, increasing the burden on poor families who are already living in poverty, however, 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 nine years and any remaining funds donated in excess of our budgeted costs, will be spent on additional gifts for the children.
The Parties are greatly anticipated by the children for it is a magical day when they can forget about their problems & enjoy a hearty meal, great entertainment, receive special treasured gifts and gives them a memorable start to the New Year, knowing that others are thinking and caring about them. The Parties cost only £2.50 (Sterling) per head and please be assured that everyone involved in organising these parties does so on a voluntary basis.
You can sponsor a child for a place at the parties by visiting our website at http://pattayastreetkids.homestead.com/howtosponsor.html and making a donation using either PayPal or by bank transfer.
This means 100% of your donation will be used for the children.
Often sponsors who visit their sponsored student like to give a gift in recognition of the hard work that these children put into their studies,often under very difficult home cirumstances. The sponsor of the small boy 'Pongpisut' (above) wanted to reward the student with a new bike and the text below is taken from an email from Liz of the Mercy Project to the boy's sponsor and shows the lengths they sometimes have to go to in order to be able to help bring the sponsor's wishes to fruition.
We have posted this video of 'Pod' the child that was the inspiration for this project. Today is 'Pod's 21st birthday.
Speaking to 'Pod' today he told us that he and his girlfriend have a baby boy and they are planning to marry shortly.
Thanks to the sponsor of sister 'Jan' two lovely little girls will sleep more comfortably from tonight.
Twins 'Jan' and 'Jane' have been given a brand new set of bunkbeds to sleep in. Until now the twins who live with their parents and older brother in one of Pattaya's slums have been sleeping on an old mattress on the floor of their slum home.
A. The relief of financial hardship among children under the age of eighteen years living in the area of Pattaya, by providing those children with goods and services they would not otherwise receive through lack of means.
Website: http://www.pattayastreetkids.org/
Email: info@pattayastreetkids.org
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