More Vocational Options through new Building

Greetings from Pattaya! It is time for an update about the progress that we have made towards the new Tamar Building. Thank you everyone for donating towards this goal and a special “Thank You” to all who donated through the “Little by Little” campaign making your money go the extra mile.

In the last months, we have focused on the needs in the city caused by the different lockdowns, the lack of tourism, and the ramifications produced by them. We concentrated our energies on helping women who were homeless and hungry by distributing thousands of food bags, hot meals, and other needed things. But we never forgot our new building project. It was always there and we kept thinking about how it would have helped us serve these hurting people.  Right now, with thousands of women out of jobs, we could be offering hope and a way out with the new vocational alternatives.  During this crisis, we also, have seen prices for real estate decrease in Pattaya due to the number of buildings that suddenly came on the market. If you drive through Pattaya right now, you will see many buildings for rent or for sale and investors are trying to snap up bargain buildings in hopes of making a profit.

At the beginning of this year, we discussed how we could jumpstart the project again. We decided to contact the owner of the building and to make him a cash offer for the building. Our thoughts were that the owner might be willing to sell it to us now for less money, all cash, since the market is flooded with buildings. The owner was very happy to hear from us, but sadly was not willing to sell the building for the price that we offered.  He even told us that he actually wanted to raise the price from the one that he quoted us last (which was more than the building is worth). Somehow the owner believes that in the middle of the whole economic crisis where this building has been empty for almost seven years and there are many other buildings for sale, that the value of his property would be going up!  It is hard to understand the thinking behind it, but we believe that he just has a number in his head and is not willing to move away from it. As that number is over the market value (Pre-Covid, we had an external company do a value estimation of the building) and the owner rejected our cash offer, we were not able to move forward.

What are the next steps? Currently, we have raised a little over 10 Million THB for the new building and are continuing to fundraise.  What that means is that during the whole Covid-19 time in 2020, we still received roughly 6 Million THB in donations for the new building. We have now decided to start looking for different buildings in the area. There are many buildings for sale and we will try to see if there is one that would meet our requirements and be close to the women we serve in the red-light areas. We are looking to find a place close enough for the women to easily reach us, but also far enough away that the red-light district will not be a temptation/distraction for them.

We are thankful that you are with us in this journey. We are still hopeful to purchase a new building sometime this year. We are sad that we are not further in our progress, but hope that through all the delays, we will find the perfect building for us.

The Tamar Family

Merry Christmas and happy and blessed New Year wishes from the whole Tamar family to you! We hope that even though restrictions are in place in many places around the world, that you still will be able to have a refreshing time with your family and friends!

We just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support during this very difficult and also very different year of 2020. We are amazed by your generosity and your help.  Without you, we, as an organization, would not be standing anymore. This year completely changed the whole way that we are financed. We normally receive about 60% of our funding through our own businesses where the women that come through our programs are employed after training. But due to Covid-19, our businesses are mostly still shut down. And when the mail also stopped going in March, our online store couldn’t mail and we were really in trouble.

As we were considering what to do, we saw that the needs of the women that were still in the bars were even greater than ours.   Many of them had no income anymore and no savings, they were losing their housing because they were not able to pay rent, and many were hungry. The idea of “food help” was born and until now we have given out thousands after thousands of food bags filled with needs of everyday life: rice, noodles, fish, soap, hygiene articles, etc. Through this program, we were able to reach and talk to many more women than we could have imagined. Many came back when they ran out of food and collected more. Even now, we are giving out a hot meal each Friday plus food bags to women that come to our Outreach Center. We were able to run mini trainings (one month long) in baking and hair dressing. And, we had a record number, 13 women, attend our three-month long vocational and life training session where we taught them sewing, hairdressing and baking. Then, we were able to not only employ all our students, but also to employ several other women in card making because we received two very big card orders. Now, at the end of the year, our students, that we helped when they had nothing, went out and helped distribute 400 huge Tamar Christmas food and gift bags to the still needy women here in Pattaya.

Moreover, we were also able to extend our child sponsorship program and added 15 children who will now receive monthly donations through us. We continued to offer housing to women in need and took in a number of new women, three of them highly pregnant who gave birth to healthy babies during this year.  The only thing that we were not able to complete was our new building project. We made some progress but were not able to raise all the needed funds in 2020, but this will be our main priority now for 2021.

Looking back, I am not sure how we did it all. Our team is smaller – as all our volunteers had to leave Thailand due to visa issues.  But we have seen our Thai women, who have gone through our program, rise up, learn, and take leadership. We are very proud of them. And somehow, which in great part is due to your sacrificial giving, we are still able to finish this year in the black – even though we had hardly any income from our businesses and gave out sooo much aid! Thank you for standing with us, for trusting us, and helping us make a difference here in Pattaya. You have touched the lives of many women and have given hope in these desperate circumstances.

From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU and please have a wonderful Christmas!

For the Tamar Family

PS: The pictures are from our different Christmas activities and Outreaches of the last weeks – please enjoy!