Bronwyn, Kylie, and Rosanne (WWM) receiving an award
from the Father Ray Foundation for their work with the handicapped.
Bronwyn Carey
Rayong-Pattaya Ladies Circle (RLC) has announced their 2nd Annual Red
Carpet Ball to be held at the Amari Pattaya on Saturday 8 November. Last year
the expatriate community packed the ballroom at the Hard Rock and was wowed not
just by the spectacular ball, but also by the Hollywood glitz and glamour, a
fashion show, and a Latin dance exhibition. The Red Carpet Ball overnight
established itself as the expatriate highlight for 2014, and the 2015 event is
now eagerly anticipated. Once again the RLC has committed the funds raised from
this event to go to Women With a Mission (WWM), a not for profit private
organisation who are celebrating ten years of operation in Thailand. Pattaya is
home to several large charitable institutions, so who are WWM, what do they do,
and why do they receive continued broad community support?
Students from Sang Ga U School on Koh Lanta wearing
Jesters T-shirts. Jesters sponsored their lunches through WWM after the tsunami.
On December 26, 2004 a tsunami devastated large parts of SE Asia, including
parts of Thailand’s southern region. While money and aid was flowing into
Thailand from local and international sources, there were still many parts of
southern Thailand that fell between the gaps. Bronwyn Carey, who had a career
working on community projects in Australia, and had headed the PILC Welfare
Group in Thailand, saw the need and sent out a message for help. Rosy Diamente
and Kylie Grimmer, also heavily involved in local charity work, put up their
hands and together it was these three ladies who made an initial trip to the
southern provinces of Thailand very soon after the tsunami, with the intention
of making a one-time contribution.
Khru Boon Choo and Rosanne Diamente with trainers
from Sattahip Hospital training staff at the Baan Khun Boon Choo.
Coinciding with the planning of their trip, the Father Ray Foundation contacted
them advising that funds that had been donated from the UK for tsunami aid and
they were wanting a reliable channel to deliver the aid on to the ground without
the inefficiencies of a large NGO or high administration costs. The Father Ray
Foundation is largely Pattaya-based, but they would initially assist WWM with
setting up initial contacts and an investigative trip through the Catholic
network in southern Thailand, and continue to partner with them today.
Rosanne working with Tangmo, who is blind, at the
Khru Boon Choo Centre in Ban Chang.
Helping Hands Pattaya, as they were originally known, was one of the earliest
offerers of aid to visit the area, travelling to Krabi and the islands of Lanta
Yai and Noi, where they saw first-hand the devastation. They met and talked with
survivors, visited hospitals and were taken to see an overflowing make-shift
morgue in Krabi where they were shown the process of body identification.
HHP, after their initial thoughts of a once-off contribution, chose small-scale
projects where they could provide direct practical assistance that did not
conflict with the mainstream aid coming in from the Thai Government, Thai Red
Cross or other large NGO’s. HHP quickly identified that the most effective use
of their expertise and funds would be to work within the communities supporting
women, children and schools.
Laurie Bastien, a volunteer working with WWM,
working with Nung at the Khru Boon Choo Centre in Ban Chang.
Most families in the region had relied on fishing or farming both as an income
and a source of food. The fishing fleets had been mostly wrecked and the farm
land heavily salinated with seawater. These projects would require major funding
and would take time to rebuild, but in the meantime people were in dire need of
food. A first project was the provision of school lunches, with support from
Jesters Care for Kids, for the 58 students of Sang-Ga-U School, children of the
small sea-gypsy community at the southern tip of Koh Lanta Yai.
Women with a Mission’s Kylie Grimmer, Rosanne
Diamente and Bronwyn Carey gather for a group photo at their last fundraising
golf tournament at Phoenix golf course.
Soon after, HHP met with Senator Meechai’s PDA, an organisation that had always
championed village self-sustainability, and convinced them to help trial a
school lunch farm project for Wat Koh Lanta, a school with over 200 students,
also on Lanta Yai Island. With initial emergency funding from Pattaya Sports
Club, they assisted the school to set up a small farm (vegetables, mushrooms,
chickens and fish) to grow food to provide lunch for the school children, their
only substantive meal for the day. The pilot project was successful and the
beginning of seven school farms over three years. By May 2005, just five months
after the tsunami, the school farm projects were already feeding 1,000 children
each day.
Pic of the children in the new canteen at Hway Ka
Loke Boarding House on the Thai Burmese Border.
In other tsunami projects, HHP provided sewing machines for women in Krabi
enabling them to start up their own micro-enterprise to support their families,
supplied milk products over three years to infant survivors of Phang-nga
Province and took on a few individual cases, such as providing diapers for a
baby boy born to a mother diagnosed with cancer soon after surviving the
tsunami. Funding came via family, friends and local charities, including Rayong
Ladies Circle and Pattaya International Ladies Club. In a lasting legacy from
the initial milk project, the UK-based Thai Children’s Trust, who initially
channelled their funds through HHP, continue funding Baan Than Namchai, an
orphanage established 6-months after the tsunami.
Students from Regents International School with the
WWM team working to build fish tanks to help set up small businesses for
families with handicapped members.
After initially committing to a once-off form of assistance that stretched to a
year, after three years their work in the tsunami areas gradually started to
wind down as the projects achieved their goal of becoming self-sustainable and
self-managed.
After a short break, and a renaming of their group, they started working as
‘Women With a Mission’, working with the local governments helping to improve
the lives of the severely handicapped (both children and adults) in Chonburi and
Rayong. Along with help from the Redemptorist Center in Pattaya, they embarked
on a campaign to build and renovate toilets, and install ramps to improve
wheelchair access in homes of the handicapped to give them the opportunity for
better quality independent living. Rosy led this project as Kylie and Bronwyn
were living out of Thailand at the time, and today continues to work tirelessly
and passionately, driving WWM’s handicapped projects.
Students from Regents School with the family after
finishing building catfish tanks for them as a Round Square Week project.
WWM was gradually starting to expand their focus towards migrant students living
in north-western Thailand and it was during this time that another natural
disaster struck; Cyclone Nagis in May 2008, which devastated Burma and damaged
migrant schools along the border areas of Thailand, specifically the Burma-Thai
border town of Mae Sot, in Tak Province.
An immediate call for support was put out by WWM, raising B50,000 to fund
repairs to a migrant school, which led to WWM being asked to assist with
clothing and rice. Friends, the local Thai community and local organisations and
businesses rallied and 2 containers of goods (1 x 20ft, 1 x 40ft) were sent to
Mae Sot for the people of Burma.
The first school lunch farm project in Koh Lanta
after the tsunami.
Following this, and using their experience from southern Thailand, they began to
initiate school lunch farm projects in the border area, and also gave assistance
to build mushroom growing ventures so the mushrooms could form part of the
children’s diet and that part of the crop could be sold, providing much needed
income for the schools.
Hway Ka Loke School and Boarding House came to their attention as one of the
largest Karen migrant schools in the area. Housing 250 migrant children, with a
further 100 Karen day children from the surrounding area using it as their only
hope for an education, it was struggling severely to make ends meet without
regular funding support.
Since taking on the role of principal funders for HKL, WWM have been providing
daily meals for boarding house students and school lunches for all students, a
mere 850 meals a day! They have rebuilt and improved school buildings and
dormitories, built a new canteen, boys’ boarding house and installed a
deep-water well with funding from dear friends, Mary and Matthew Kelly, and a
UK-based Foundation. They have been paying teachers’ salaries, meeting running
costs and subsidising the school’s pick-up truck. Regents International School
students funded construction of a computer room, enabling access to the
internet, and a sewing room so that the older girls of HKL could learn and
develop new skills. Step by step, WWM together with their friends and
supporters, have been making improvements to the lives of these children.
Hedie Sizoo teaching sewing to students at CDTC
school.
At the same time WWM had visited Umphium Mae Refugee camp at the request of a
local organization, as conditions in the camp were one of the worst. The camp
was full of children, some orphaned, but many just sent across by their parents
to escape the danger. These children were living in squalor, crammed into
makeshift huts, little sanitation, little food, and only very basic education
facilities. WWM made the decision to help a particular boarding house, and again
focused on improving the lives of the young, with additional food, clothing,
books, and basics such as candles so the children could study in the evenings.
Giving out hygiene supplies to the students at Hway
Ka Loke Boarding House.
In order to provide assistance to families struggling to support severely
disabled family members, WWM again led by Rosy, and with the help of the local
municipality set up small-scale fish farm projects in our local Pattaya
community where they helped build fish tanks, provided the fish fingerlings and
food, and then worked with these families to grow fish for their own
consumption, but reserving part of the stock for sale so they could generate
income. Some of this was to buy more fingerlings and fish food to keep their
project running, with enough left over to make a small profit. In all,
twenty-five family-based fish farm projects were initiated. They attracted
supporters for this project, again including Regents International School, who
had encompassed it in their ‘Round Square’ program as a community project. This
has helped form a strong enduring link between WWM and Regent’s with the school
now providing a full boarding scholarship to one of the Karen students from Hway
Ka Loke School.
Students in their new uniforms in the classroom at
CDTC school.
WWM continue to work with the disabled in our community. When WWM first visited
Baan Khru Boon Choo two years ago, the center housed 56 children with a variety
of disabilities. Today there are over 110 young disabled people attending the
center, either as day students or boarders. WWM has been able to set up a
special classroom for children with autism and cerebral palsy and has provided
training for the staff. WWM volunteers, with professional skills including
speech therapy, physical therapy and teaching the deaf, have been working at the
school for the past two years and have made dramatic improvements to the
programs, and importantly, to the quality and prospects of the children’s lives.
Students using the new computer room funded through
Regents Gold Fish Program.
Ten years has seen a lot of hard, dedicated work for the three ladies who run
this private organisation and they have accomplished much in areas where the
need is greatest. Importantly they commit their time at no cost, and personally
supervise the programs to ensure every baht is spent wisely, and where possible,
try to make all programs self-sustaining. The Red Carpet Ball is not just a
celebration of their 10 years of dedicated work, but recognition of WWM’s
important work throughout the Thailand community. They have much gratitude for
their supporters and donors over the past ten years and know that without their
support, none of this would have been possible.
Getting ready for lunch at CDTC school.
WWM subscribe to the beliefs of ‘Nourish, Educate and Care’, funding daily
meals, including school lunches; providing teacher salaries, teaching materials
and school uniforms; offering access to services and resources to disabled and
underprivileged children and their families, and more information can be found
on their website - www.mywwm.org.
Staff at Baan Khru Boon Choo Centre with Laurie
Bastien, Rosanne, and Wanji at the end of 2 days of training by Laurie Bastian.
