Help Sexworkers in Thailand find a new life!

Greetings from Tamar Center. Today, we want to share with you about the Tamar Vocational and Life Training that started at the beginning of May and will run for three months until the end of July. The women that joined the training are receiving vocational training in their chosen profession. The first week of the training we offered them try-out days in our Bakery, Restaurant, Coffee Shop, Hair Salon and in our hospitality team and sewing room. The women tried out the different jobs and after that had the weekend to decide which of the vocations they wanted to study. For most of the women the decision was easy but for some of them it was a difficult decision, and, in the end, they decided to study baking, cooking, hair dressing and barista.

Since May the women have been studying hard and have learned many skills. Most of the days there is a really nice smell coming out of the bakery and all of us that work at Tamar, are getting hungry… and thankfully we can test some of it as well. The hairdressing training has first been training on “fake heads” but now the women have progressed to real people and the results are nice. Some of them have changed their hair colors and are enjoying their free new looks. The barista team is working on new recipes, testing different beans, and making plans to offer some of the new drinks in our restaurant soon. The cooking team is not only learning to cook single dishes, they also learned to cook spaghetti for a large group of about 50 people. We hope that through the pictures you will get an impression of the things that our women have learned so far and are continuing to learn.

But vocational training is not everything – they also learn life skills, learn how to budget, learn about family relationships, learn about themselves, and receive group and individual counseling. We have seen some great transformation in the lives of these women over the last weeks and our goal is that they can continue to transform and will soon be ready to stand on their own feet again and provide for themselves and their kids/families through the things that they have learned.

But the training is not all about learning – there is also a lot of fun: Biking outing on the weekend, puppet training and movie night to name just a few.

But even if our main concentration has been on the training program since May, we still are continuing our daily free English classes to the women that are still working in the bars, are going three times per week on outreach into the bars of Pattaya and continue to help the other women that are already a bit longer in our program.

Thank you for your support and help that makes our work possible!

For the Tamar Family