Help Educate Children Living in Poverty inThailand

Dear Supporters, 

This quarter, we have begun renovations to our program. As well as continuing to review Jolly Phonics as an improved learning approach to English. We organized brilliant projects with our regular partners, the Community Development Center (CDC), the BNK Thai school, Bantham Namchai kindergarten (BTNC) and The Camillian Social Center. We continued to progress towards our SDG objectives through educating our students in English and good hygiene practices.

GVI now attend the afternoon sessions at our partner Camillian, supporting the staff and students there has been helpful (SDGs 3 and 17). We have been using the physiotherapy equipment that we bought with the help of GVI Trust in our sessions and watching the students grow in confidence and strength as one uses her walker to move around rather than scooting on the floor. This is amazing to see, and we are so happy to have been able to give the center these items to aid in their goals for their students.

In December with the help of GVI Trust we bought art supplies for the students at CDC, so that they could compete on an equal footing with our partner school, BNK, in an art competition leadership project. 30 students created pieces of art about peace, Christmas and the Tsunami. The pieces were creative and emotionally stimulating. This was the second interscholastic competition between CDC and BNK that GVI Phang Nga has held this year, encouraging confidence and creativity in the students at our partner schools (SDG 17), inspiring male and female students to create (SDG 5) and showing that Thai and Burmese students can compete equally (SDG 10). Giving access to extracurricular interests for the students will lead to an interest in different future options for employment in the global workforce, mirroring the different creative options they have been given in their formative years.

In December, GVI created a pilot survey to be conducted in the village to ask the opinion of the local people about potential community development objectives. The results showed that people wanted more information about dental hygiene, bringing healthcare workers into the village and improved sports facilities. This information gives our healthcare program direction for changes we want to make and facilities to work towards in the next year with the support of the GVI Trust.

We have been tracking our progress at the schools and organizing exciting innovative events with our partners to make sure that ours is a project we are proud of. We are commencing evening adult classes twice weekly, providing quality education and a chance to improve employability. We will also continue to communicate with the community about their wants and needs in the village.

All our best, 

Thailand Community