Rice for Thai kindergarteners in need

Thank you so much for supporting our rice program.

We prepare over 2,500 servings of rice, along with vitamin-enriched dishes, at lunchtime every school day for the children enrolled in our slum kindergartens. For most of these children, lunch is their only nutritious meal of the day. Your gift changes the world for these children. It gives them the strength and sustenance to develop, concentrate, grow, and learn.

It’s hard to measure the exact value your support brings, day by day, but over time, the results are truly wonderful.

Last week, for example, over a three-day period, we held our annual ceremonies for the children graduating from our twenty-three kindergartens. It was our liveliest, happiest, and certainly most colorful celebration of the year. Our entire Mercy Centre was festooned with balloons, flowers, toys and stuffed animals. It was riotously crazy fun!  Amid glorious pomp and circumstance, over 650 poor children donned caps and gowns and received their diplomas.

Father Joe Maier, our foundation’s founder, led the ceremony, exhorting all the children to stay in school. If there are seemingly impossible problems at home, Fr. Joe told them...if they go to sleep hungry…if the roofs over their shacks leak and flood their homes, if their moms play cards and their dads drink and neglect them…if there’s no money for lunch or transportation or school fees…no matter what, Fr Joe insisted, they must go to school! “Come to our Mercy Centre and let us help, but regardless, whatever the circumstances, keep advancing, keep learning, keep going to school!”

Our graduation ceremony is the culmination of our three-year kindergarten program. We follow the Thai national curriculum and make sure that our school children gain their first lessons with a sense of triumph and joy. They can say with pride, "We learn to count, to dance, to sing, to tell stories, to play new games, to brush our teeth, to fight germs, to say nice words, to make friends." The children are well prepared for entry into formal government primary school.

Without sustenance, none of this could happen. One out of five children comes to our schools malnourished and hungry. Your support for our lunch program is integral to the children’s academic success.

In addition, your support reaches those in our surrounding slum community who are most in need, including:

• Destitute families who cannot afford food.
• Families who have lost everything due to fires, floods, or evictions.
• Our own children - we have 150 boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 20 – who live in our homes and shelters in Mercy Centre.
• Ethnic Mokan children (the “sea gypsies” of the Andaman) who we care for and educate in Ranong Province, south of Bangkok.
• The most destitute patients we visit in our HIV/AIDS Homecare Community Outreach Program.
• Anyone hungry and in need who comes to our door.

Thank you again. Please visit our Mercy Centre whenever you may be in Bangkok. You are always welcome and will always be a part of our Mercy family

Links:

• Our website