Empower, educate, and protect young Thai mothers

One of The Light Center's primary objectives is to help young mother's stand on their own feet. A recent example of this was a young woman nicknamed Min (not her real name). She had left the Isan region to find work in Bangkok to support her family, and ended up working a bar service job late into the night. When she found out she was pregnant she returned home to her father's house. He was furious when he found out Min was pregnant and threatened to stab her in the stomach in a drunken rage. She escaped and took refuge in The Light Center's safe home. Our team provided counseling and trained her how to take care of her newborn baby. She was determined to keep her baby and was able to safely transition to another family member's home who was willing to provide continued support. Our team will continue following up with her to make sure her situaiton is safe and to continue providing support. We are thankful for the opportunity to help many young women like Min who simply need someone to walk with them and provide support until they can stand on their own feet again. Thank you for supporting The Light Center's work to help these young women and their babies!

Over the years we have had the privilege to help many young mothers get back on their feet and start a new life with their child. Unfortunately it's not always legally possible for a mother to keep her baby and in those cases, we want to help children be placed with a permanent family as fast as possible. There are many wonderful organizations facilitating international adoptions but the long process can often leave children without a family until they are already in elementary school. When we started The Light Center, we asked our local Department of Social Development if we could work together to get children in families domestically. The year-long approval process for domestic adoption is thorough and includes multiple home visits. There are many wonderful Thai families that would love to adopt but simply haven't been informed that it's possible. Thanks to our local government actively finding families, we've seen every orphan placed in a family in less than a year instead of waiting years on the international process. Our job is simply to provide foster care for the children while the government searches for a matching family. Thanks to strategic partnerships like this one, children are being loved by their new families faster.