It was some time ago when we launched our Gamma Team idea.

Sadly, although we have had a couple of ex-volunteers doing what they can we still only have 2 official Gamma Teams; our first Faa gamma, headed by good friend Heather Mackay in Queensland , Australia; and Yai Gamma which is basically my Mum and my sister. Both these teams are doing their best to hold varying fund raisers most months and I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those involved for all their hard work and support.

Our present basic monthly running costs are around 1000 pounds sterling. Thanks to great efforts by both Gamma teams over the Xmas period and regular contributions from an American couple, we received a little over that for Januarys budget. This is the first time we have actually covered our budget totally with donations.

On average we are receiving just half of what we need with the remainder being made up by myself.

To sustain our work and to hopefully move forward this is not a tenable situation.

If you are looking in and have time , energy and ideas and would like to help a very worthwhile cause please consider joining our Fund Raising Family. Your “team” can be just one person or a group of friends. If you keep a record of your Fund raising activities and take some photos to we will give you space on our website where your efforts will be credited.

From jumble sales to home made fashion show, movie clubs to coffee mornings…..as the old adage  goes,” every little helps” and with enough small fund raising teams around the world our target is not a huge mountain to climb.

If you are local to or visiting Chiang Mai and want to confirm what you see on our website via a personal visit please do get in touch.

We are dedicated to quality “family style” care with extensive efforts towards true development of each and every child’s potential, employing art, music, dance, character building work projects and are now moving forward with even more practical skills development, including basic electronics.

Please help us sustain our work, which is starting to show marked results. And not just to sustain but to develop and offer  ”A Better Chance” to many more children in the future.

And another full day it was.

Certainly the morning was busy with the usual work time slot, with more work being done to our “workshop”.

As there wasn’t really enough jobs to go round on this project, Anna took some of the girls to begin a new Mural on the rear wall of the outdoor shower block.

After work hour Tom got into more Patong and Anna helped Bpaa Zang and the girls in the kitchen.

Top star lunch. Nam pik phlaa with  sweet and sour chicken and cabbage and eggplant on the side. Genuine Thai cuisine as tasty as any you’d get in the city restaurants.

In the after noon things were a little more chilled with the kids keeping themselves occupied with Patong and their bicycles and the adults taking some time to let our food go done and grab an afternoon nap.

Active Anna succumbed, finally, to the heat and took some well earned nap time in the garden.

We all said a big thanks to our visitors over dinner and wish them all the best for their new life in Australia. Hopefully “see you again” rather than goodbye?

The day started off  Anna and Tom arriving shortly after breakfast.

They came bearing gifts of some great card model kits, including Tower Bridge and Big Ben.

After a short period helping the kids get started on the models it was time for work hour. We are at the moment having a serious overhaul of our store room, previously treated more like a dumping ground.

We had already emptied the room, swept and cleaned and now the kids are getting to test their practical skills yet again, building new shelves from bamboo.

With Tai showing the most interest in practical exercises and the plan being to create an ordered workshop, he has once again taken charge and got to work designing the shelf units and passing on instruction for measuring out the bamboo needed.

Todays session finished, Anna and Tom then joined some May 2 , Jor  and Nu in the kitchen to help prepare a very tasty sweet potato curry for lunch.

After lunch there was more model making before our 2 helpful Volunteers ran an hours English based around an introduction to their 2 home countries, Australia and England.

That finsished it was back to the kitchen to help prepare Salmon fish cakes and more curry for dinner.

With everything ready there was also time for a fun game of Patong .

Just a few days ago we received a grand total of 795 pounds sterling from The Faa Gamma Fund raising team, headed by our good friend Heather Mackay who had been working hard with the Xmas fund raising. Their target was 1000 AUD and final total equates to 1200AUD…so big thanks to Heather and all those who contributed. As you can see by our monthly target thermometer, thanks to you January’s target is almost reached already.

And today saw the arrival of our latest volunteers, who also hail from Australia. Angela and Alexi arrived in Chiang Mai, from Pai, this morning. Getting a tuk tuk to Sarapee, they had a short wait before I arrived to pick them up.

After a quick stop at the volunteer accommodation we came over to Stratton House where Angie and Alexi were quickly introduced to the children. It wasn’t long before they were joining in with the kids Saturday chill time, playing ping pong, Patong, doing jigsaw puzzles and later on bicycle riding.

They also pitched in, in the kitchen helping the children prepare the vegetables for green curry.

Nice to note that the eggplants were fresh from our own vegetable plots:)

We hope they enjoyed the first day of their 3 day visit, the kids certainly enjoyed the day and look forward to seeing Angie and Alexis again tomorrow.

Our present running costs are around 40-50,000 baht. So ideally we are aiming to find 15 to 20 teams out there.
Have you volunteered here recently, or heard of our work from friends, or possibly come across this site while surfing the net and like what you see?
If you would like to join us in developing this Foundation and helping to help many more children here in Thailand please consider setting up your own fund raising team.
We can supply you with promotional material and info on our Foundations work, Aims and Objectives.
We are currently in negotiations to purchase land on which we hope to build a purpose built , permanent facility that will increase the number of placements we can offer.
To make this a reality we desperately need your help. Each team will have their fundraising work reported here on this website.
If you would like to help please get in touch using the contact link at the bottom of the page.

They stayed for dinner and met all the kids and before they left we agreed to a Xmas visit when they will hopefully be staying with us here in Stratton House for a few days.

15 year old Jemsai is studying child care back in Australia and is keen to use her visit to gain experience.

They also very generously donated 1000 baht to enable us to purchase turf for our ongoing garden improvements.

Big thanks to you both for your help , the turf has already been laid:)

We look forward to seeing you again at Xmas.

Childrens Day is an annual event in Thailand, held on the second weekend in January, where a lot of effort is put into making a special day for all children.

Personally I prefer it to Xmas as there is no religious pretence, just blatant spoiling of the children for a day.

Indeed many children get more than one day as the schools often hold their own ‘Childrens Day’ on the Friday, as they did at Pasak School, where I teach.

It was not an easy decision as to where to take the children from Stratton House on Childrens Day; so many events, large and small, to choose from.

In the end we elected to follow advice given by a local friend and take them to Airforce 41 Base, close to Chiang Mai Airport, where, we were told , there would be several aircraft on display and lots of interesting stuff going on.

Hindsight is a pretty useless thing as, but in hindsight it was not such a good descision for us.

It certainly was a big affair with thousands of local families attending. Our problem was the numbers and lay-out. From the car parking area there was quite along route to walk to get to where all the aircraft and activities were.

This route was lined with hundreds of stalls selling all manner of clothes, toys, nic-nacs, food, etc; so many distractions for the kids within a narrow walkway packed with hundreds of people.

Within 10 minutes we had lost the two older boys. Although confident that they could look after themselves we still needed to locate them incase an emergency caused us to need to leave. Everyone had been issued with a card with phone number to ring if our group got seperated.

Leaving the other children at The Bouncy Castle with Wasana, our house Mum, myself and Boon went on a search. Nearly 2 hours later after much searching and numerous tannoy calls we bumped into the 2 boys on the way back to the car, blissfully unaware of the stress they had caused.

Lucky it was Childrens Day and they got away with  stern instruction not to wander off again. In view of the crowds and difficulty in keeping the group together we then left Airforce 41 and drove into Chiang Mai to Kad Suan Kaow Shopping Mall where there was a special Childrens Day playground set up in the centre ‘garden’.

After lunch in the Food Court in the lower level of the Mall we took the Children to the fun and games in the central garden area.

The two older boys were given the job of acting as extra eyes to keep an eye out for the younger ones as they joined the fun.

Being a much more contained area the crowds were not such a problem and the kids had a great afternoon.

It was late afternoon , early evening when they got their special Childrens Day surprise, made possible by the generous efforts of the Faa Gamma fundraising team in Australia.

The team kindly held a special Xmas appeal to raise money to purchase bicycles for the children to use and enjoy.

We were able to buy four bicycles for the children to share and these were presented to the children on their return to Stratton House.

Apologies for the poor photo quality.

Many thanks to our good friend Heather and all her team; the kids love the bikes and use them everyday as soon as they return from school.

For more photos from Childrens Day please visit our photobucket album here.

The team is named after Founder member Heather, using her Thai name.

The team members are; Heather Mackay; Dawn Mackay; Luca Martinelli: Chloe Martinelli; Vesna Ivkovic; Michelle Huxtable and Azadeh Niah.

Hopefully we’ll get photos of all team members soon.

Our first Gamma Team , Faa Gamma has already been hard at work for the Foundation.

After collecting donated items for around 6 weeks, and storing them at Heathers house,

The guys got together to sort everything into categories, ready for a car boot sale the next day.

Luca loaded everything into the car.

And the early next morning, like very early, 3.30am, Heather and her Mum set off to get to the car boot sale for 5am.

As you can see they had to wrap up warm in the cold and dark.

Sterling work, it really is great support and encouragement to us here in Thailand to see others pitching in like this.

After setting up whilst it was still dark and spending 7 hours rallying buyers, packing in the searing heat of midday they managed to raise $200, Australian.

Yep, this hard working and enthusiastic team hail from the great Australia.

They have another car boot sale planned for September, a Fashion Parade in November and many more great ideas for the future, just what we need, thanks a lot all you guys.
For all the photos from the team please visit our photobucket album , here.

Latest news from Faa Gamma

We were very grateful to receive a further donation from Faa Gamma team member, Michelle Huxtable, of approximately 4240 baht, bringing Faa gammas combined donation total to 9,670 baht so far. Thanks again guys:)

27th Sept 09….more thanks to the team for a further 5,724 baht.(running total, 15,394 baht)…I believe this was from another car boot sale, will add details when I see Heather, who is due to arrive in Chiang Mai this week.

7th December 2009

Novembe saw another donation from the team , 8720 baht, raised through holding a fashion show.

We also ecently received a donation of 1090 baht from a generous lady, Mary Gray who was pointed to our website by Faa Gamma founder Heather.

The team are now had at work on a  Xmas Bike Appeal raising money for us to be able to buy bicycles for all the kids. The Faa Gamma Bike Appeal.(Sorry Heather, I had to cut the photo to be able to upload to google docs)