But big news of the week is that we now have 5 new arrivals.

We are happy to announce that we are now caring for another 5 children, bringing the total number of children at Stratton House to 8.
Responding to a call from Nan province, Boon and I traveled to Nan on Boxing day to assess the childrens circumstances and make a decision on placements.
It was a long trip, having also to pick up a relative of some of the children concerned, from Mae Wang, in order that she could liase and translate for us. As you may know there are many regional languages in use in Thailand, so we could not just rely on Somboons Thai.
It took nearly 9 hours in total and we arrived at our first destination,the town of Phua, in Nan Province at around 5pm.
Here we met 3 of the children; 7 year old Som and her sister Nu,10 and Tai a 12 year old boy from the same village.
The girls house was very basic and spartan with a large extended family living with them.

 We were told that they had 5 siblings and that their parents needed to work in Chiang Rai.

The struggle to provide for the whole family and the wish for at least some of their children to have a better chance led them to contact us.
Whilst we were there a neighbour came to ask if we could help his son, Tai.

Tai is a quiet boy, a keen artist we have discovered, and it appears that the main worry for the father was that they live in an area where it is common for teenage boys to slip into bad ways and he desperately wanted to keep his son away from this possibility.
With the evening closing in it was decided that we would visit the other children the next morning and Boon and myself went and booked into a small guesthouse in Phua.
With a seven o’clock start the next morning, we first met up with our liason lady back at the first village before heading off to Tung Chang, another 30kms down the road, and up into a nearby Hill Tribe village.
This was the most difficult part of the trip as the family concerned were asking for placements for  girls.
At present, whilst we are still in the registration process, and so without major sponsors, we have had to limit the placements we offer right now, to ensure that budget pressures do not become to great to quickly. With the two girls we had already agreed placements for we only had one more placement to offer for now.
We explained this too the family and let them know that there will be further possibility for placement once registration is complete and we can hopefully find companies that may support us.
They then had the difficult descision as to which child would come with us.
It certainly doesn’t take long to make a decision on offering placement in such villages, when you see their living conditions.
Although these villagers clearly have pride in there homes and everything is made to look as beautiful as possible many houses have now proper flooring and where we were, one very basic toilet is shared between several houses.
It was decided that 12 year old May would come this time with the possibility of her friend joining us later in the year.
Also from this village we met 16 year old Dtu.Due to his families circumstances he has not attended school for the last year. With no schooling and little work prospects his family asked us to help.
It was a tearful morning as decisions were made and children boarded our bus for the long haul back to Chiang Mai. Nu and Soms mother travelled with us to see the home for herself before returning to Phua the next day.
And so we move forward to 2010 with a much extended family and hope that more of you out there find us and find it in your heart to help in anyway you can.
For more photos please vist our photo album here.

I have been selecting the best of the drawings by all the children, along with the best photos to date, with the intention of producing postcards and greetings cards that will be on sale soon in our online shop which is being worked on by our webmaster Ally. Having seen the prototype I’m quite excited.

We will also do our best to find some local outlets who may sell these items for us within the local community.

Its getting a bit close for comfort but we will also be seeing if the children would like to produce some handmade Christmas cards.

We have to say a big thanks to Ally for all her hard work and also for now having sponsored our website for the next 5 years as well as donating 1000 baht a month to cover our internet expenses. Cheers Ally.

You will find the link on ‘contributions and fund total’ , which you can reach on the scroll down from the ‘donate’ tab.

Further improvements on their way are;

the addition of Childrens Profiles, where you will find details of how you can sponsor an individual child and follow their progress during their stay at Stratton House;

a Thai language version of the website so as to keep our local supporters informed and with equal chance to get involved;

news on our work to encourage independent monitoring including a planned scheme to recruit ‘Advocates’ for each child. Advocates will be encouraged to visit the facility on a regular basis and highlight any concerns that they or their allotted child may have. We aim to give care of the highest standards here but do not claim to be perfect, and hope that the Advocates will help us to make sure we are continually improving.

It was too good a deal to miss and the hope is that we can recoup the money by offering advertising on the sides of the vehicle.

The last couple of days has seen more hard work preparing the kitchen/dining area which is coming together nicely.

Boon has been putting his plumbing skills to good use,plumbing in the kitchen sinks.
For my part, as well as yet more barrowing, i have been hard at it with paint brushes and rollers and hope to have the paint work all done by Thursday this week.
Other good news is that Wassana, our lady chef from our Brick Road Cafe days has confirmed that she will take the position of live-in house mother.

For all the latest photos please visit our photobucket album here.