Empowering Youth Through Higher Education

We celebrated our 16th anniversary with a "Sweet Sixteen" Party in Chiang Mai, which included our Warm Heart graduates, staff, and community partners who have joined us on this wonderful journey.

Mali, our Children's Home Manager put out the word to our network of Warm Heart graduates, inviting them to join us for our 16th Anniversary Celebrations. 

They came from the mountains, Europe, and around Chiang Mai - in person or in short videos (see below for the link to our 16th Anniversary Celebration web page of videos and photos.) We brought the children and staff from our children's home, giving everyone a night off from cooking.  

We had 14 graduates join us.  Wipope has gone back to his mountain village and started a coffee business - he has a line of great coffee that he sells in Chiang Mai and enjoys having his own coffee shop looking out over the mountain vistas near Chiang Dao. 

His sister, Busaba, sent us a video from her senior year in high school near Vieng Hang, to say she is thriving and plans to study accounting when she graduates. Our vocational high school, college, and university students took a break from Nursing School, studying retail marketing, mechanics, and computers

Nit traveled the farthest, arriving just in time, back from Europe with a master's degree in social work from the Erasmus University Program. 

Our staff enjoyed the delight of the younger children amidst the glitter of the hotel.  The middle school and high school students loved visiting with our graduates, finding mentors, and checking out options for future careers. We all agreed that we would come to visit them at their universities and see where they work.

Thanks to our friends at the Shangri-La Hotel in Chiang Mai, we had a great venue and delicious food at a manageable cost.  Our US Board members donated funds to cover our staff and the children from the Children's Home. 

Our guests and friends covered our other costs; generous raffle and silent auction donations helped us raise funds for our Higher Education Fund.

We celebrated with some of the organizations that have joined us in programs to bring education, health, and brighter futures to our marginalized communities. "It takes a village" to raise a child and we have been blessed with great partners over the years in Chiang Mai.

Thank you all for continuing to make this possible.

Best wishes for the coming months!

Dana, Michael, Evelind, and the Warm Heart Family

Links:

• Our Sweet 16 Celebration - Graduates, Programs and Joy

In April we celebrated the marriage of our Warm Heart graduate, Koon to a young man from another Phrao hilltribe family.  She is working as the chef in a nearby resort and he is running the family farm.  We had joyful graduations from kindergarten through middle school to high school, and vocational college, in early March, and then the hot weather with the smokey haze set in.  The younger children headed to their mountain villages and the older students headed back to school or working until the next term starts in June.

Four vocational high school graduates will continue for another two years to receive their associate certificates in Marketing and Tourism. Nipa completed her Associates Certificate in Tourism and Hospitality and is ready for the job market. From the Maepang Middle School, A and Tiew are headed to Phrao High School to study English and Chinese. At the graduation ceremony, we were delighted to run into Yim, our Warm Heart and university grad who is teaching at our middle school. 

Our three Phrao high school seniors graduated in March and have been helping at home in the mountains and at Warm Heart, waiting to hear from the university.  All three have top grades and were above the automatic acceptance cutoff.  All the same, they had to take numerous entrance exams and have been waiting to hear.  Sai learned early that she was accepted to a great nursing school in Chiang Mai.  Ying has been accepted into the Rajabhat University program in Psychology.  Tangmo is helping out at her grandmother's farms while she waits to hear.

We have a wonderful group of students celebrating their achievements to date, excited about the next adventure away from our home.

Thank you for making their dreams possible!

Warm regards for

Dana, Michael, Evelind, and the Warm Heart Family