The annual Father Ray Foundation SOS Rice Appeal will be taking place again this year, on the first two weekends in December. There will also be one extra day on Tuesday 5th December, the day that will now be officially known and celebrated as King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Birthday Anniversary.
Each year an appeal is made to the people of Pattaya, asking them to make a donation of a bag of rice which will be used to help feed the 850 children and students currently living and being educated at the Father Ray Foundation.
Each year the supermarkets of Pattaya invite the children, students and volunteers from the Foundation into their stores to collect donations from the shoppers. Stores taking part this year include Foodland, Big C, Big C Extra, Best, Central Festival Beach Road, Makro and Tesco Lotus; cash donations can also be made at branches of 7-Eleven.
Apart from rice, the Foundation also needs cooking oil, sugar, salt, fish sauce, canned fish and dried noodles.
The Foundation provides nutritious meals to the hundreds of children living at the Father Ray Children’s Home, Children’s Village and Drop-In Center. It provides breakfast for all the toddlers attending the Day Care Center as many won’t have food at home. It cooks three meals a day for the students at the Vocational School for People with Disabilities and the School for the Blind, and it makes sure the food served is the freshest and most nutritious available.
It has an organic farm producing food that goes straight from land to kitchen to plate, making sure there that the children receive as little chemicals as possible.
In one year the Foundation cooks 75,000kgs of rice (165,000lbs to our American friends). It goes through 29,000 liters of cooking oil and 5,000kgs of salt and sugar.
This year the children and students of Pattaya once again need your help to make sure they have enough to eat.
