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More work was done on the roof of the Villa this weekend. Its taking a little longer than I expected but only because Tai appears to putting a lot of thought in how to make it secure and durable.
The whole team, plus Zak, pitched in , working very well together once again. Its been great to see the team become more efficient and organised over time.
I only hope they know how proud of them I am.
I think the photos and videos say much more about this weekends work than I can.
I am so proud of our children for all their hard work and effort with the Villa and Sport Project. The last few sessions have been spent creating flower beds around the outdoor concrete chess table.
There has been some great thought put into it and I can honestly report that the ideas are all the children’s creations.
This area is particularly May 2′s idea but once again Tai has been adding that extra touch adding wooden posts and bamboo strip fencing around the front flower beds.
I also love the curved flower beds behind the chess table which I’m sure will be beautiful once the planted flowers come through.
Keep this up kids and you could start your own Landscaping company when you get older. The leading four man team have now got into holdiing proper planning meetings in the evenings before project days; organising what work will be done and by who.
The Project budget of 5 thousand baht has been donated by Helen Williams, a good friend and Mother of one of the Autistic children I used to care for in the UK.
Woops, I should know better than to put a time limit on these posts, how easily two days can stretch to 10. With a new Volunteer and finalising the land purchase I’ve had no time. But I digress…..
After 3 months hard graft;
(which I neglected to mention also featured some much appreciated help from our good friend Heather, of the Faa Gamma Fund raising team, and her family who were over on a visit and helped us prepare the playground area and first fence)
;getting the house and grounds ready and starting the process of registering The Foundation; the grounds were looking pretty barren but safe and all the furnishings and fitting of fans , etc finished.
We also had two brand new shower/toilets blocks built to ensure adequate facilities.
With a possible 14 residents all needing to get ready for school in the morning this was seen as a must do.
We were then waiting on the registration process which can take a very long time.
Many checks by City Hall, the Police and local authorities.
Determined to do things right we had not planned to open officially or take any children before this process was finished.
At the time I was working as a Volunteer English teaching assistant at a rural Thai school.
When one of their pupils stopped coming to school, one of the Teachers, knowing that we were setting up the Foundation, explained that the boy had been sent back home from his placement in a Lamphun Childrens Home and was no longer receiving regular education, and worse still, was back in what was seen by many as an abusive and neglectful home situation. The Teacher cared very much for the boy and asked if we could help.
The nature of “care” means that as much as you may want to follow protocol, sometimes you simply can not turn your back.
Knowing the boy, knowing his woeful situation and knowing that Stratton House was fit and ready to accommodate we simply could not ignore this call for help.
So, after a home visit and first hand assessment of his situation, and with the request for a placement coming, not only from his teacher but, his wider family also , we took our first child into the care of The Stratton ABC Foundation on Nov 1st 2009.
Within 3 a month the same fate beset two young girls who had been attending the same school, evicted from their previous placement. Once again the Teacher asked us for help.
After home visit, assessment and request from the family we agreed to help.
One of the pledges we make here at The Stratton ABC Foundation is that once a child has been given a placement they become one of the “Family”.
The nature of a Childrens Home means that children who come here may well come with many problems. We are here to care and will do our utmost to do the best we can for each and every child, and ending a placement would only ever happen if we felt that The Stratton ABC Foundation was not able to give the best service that any particular child needed.
If you missed the last “Recollections” post follow the link below.
You may have read last week, about Tai having given the girls a hard time about their cooking. We made sure that this week was Tais turn. Having not really shown an interest in cooking before , the expected result was for the girls to be able to get their own back.
So on Saturday afternoon Wasana put Tai to work.
In fact it was a team effort, with Jack and Nu helping with the prep.
The cooking though, was all down to Tai.
I had asked for one of my favourites, Kaow Pat Geng Keowan; thats green curry fried rice.
It turned out that Tai has discovered a new talent, as the final result got close to rivaling Wasanas version.
In stead of giving him a hard time the girls and everyone else graciously gave him the praise he deserved.
For more photos from last week at home, please visit our photobucket album here.
Its been a week heavy on the homework. May(2), especially had a whole stack to complete over the weekend. She did her best but ended up having to finish up at school on Monday.
The other exciting news has been the kids getting started on the Thai language website for the Foundation.
We want all the children to be involved, but have selected the four eldest, Gu, Tai, May(2) and Jor as the ones responsible enough to actually work on the computer.
The younger ones will produce work on paper for the older ones to enter onto the site.
They got off to a good start this last weekend, with everyone writing up their own profile, some of which have already appeared on the site.
In the future they will also be doing weekly blog entries and a write up of the weekly trip out.
Great start kids, I’m so proud of you.
Its a long time coming, but here at last is the report on the recent Childrens Day celebrations.
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.
