Empower Young Girls to Achieve a Successful Career

We have 26 students in higher education; ten at university and sixteen in high school. The schools opened in June but closed again as the pandemic spiked. Everyone is going a bit stir-crazy so we have added more activities - English conversation zooms with teenagers in Canada, India, and Thailand plus weekend cooking classes (mostly edible) and learning how to make videos that tell a story.

University Updates

Earn has officially graduated in Environmental Sciences from Rajabhat Lampang University. She is in the queue for job applications to the Forestry department. In the meantime, she is working at Warm Heart in the biochar and Agroforestry programs plus taking a daily group of the younger children to complete their schoolwork.

Most of the university students have stayed near school, working online and in small pods with other students. All the April high school graduates have been placed at universities.  Naan (nursing) and Jaa (science teacher) were placed by the end of April and in May, Aop was accepted into the Law program at Phayao University, about four hours from Warm Heart. She was in the Border Police Reserves in high school (similar to ROTC in the US) and got interested in the law through that experience.

Tanqua is back from nursing school for two months and has been assisting on Project Access visits to the elderly and disabled, in between her online studies. She is encouraging first-year nursing student, Naan, that all that anatomy will be worthwhile soon.

High School

We have a total of 16 students at the high school level. Eight of the students are at Phrao High School. There are five girls in the Math and Science track and one in accounting. The two boys are taking Welding and Shop courses. In addition, we have four girls attending vocational high schools in Chiang Mai, studying marketing and hospitality. Preaw is in her senior year studying agriculture in Phayao and plans to return to Chiang Mai for university. Somkit is studying electronics in Chiang Mai, following in his brother’s (Somphop) footsteps.

Thank you for your enduring support!

Chiang Mai is back in pandemic lockdown as of May 1, but school plans and tuitions are still moving forward. Our high school and university students are finishing up their terms online and preparing for the start of the new school year.  We will have close to 30 students in higher education - 21 girls and 8 boys.

University Updates

We are proud to announce two more university graduates! Soda graduated in December in Public Health from Rajabhat University and has taken over the Warm Heart Project Access program full time. Faa graduated from Maejo University in Public Administration and is working in Phrao while studying for the government civil service exam

The pandemic restrictions have slowed the college acceptance process and so far two out of three high school graduates have been accepted.  Jaa was accepted in Science and Math at the Teacher's College at Rajabhat University in Chiang Mai.  Naan will start orientation at Payap Nursing School, also in Chiang Mai, in mid-May. 

Naan has been one of our top students. She was the first girl in her village to be allowed to go to school past six grade.  After long negotiations with her father, who is the village headman and has 7 children, Naan was allowed to come to Warm Heart and she has made the most of the time here.  She has been at the top of her class in the math and science track at the Phrao High School, joined the high school border police reserve (like ROTC in the US) and was the leader of the volleyball team.  Sensitive to the stigma of being from the hill tribes, she worked through school breaks in our kitchen to earn money for braces.

Jaa was ambivalent about what to do after high school but changed her outlook after visiting Yim, our student currently in the science teacher program at Rajabhat.  Jaa has become a good role model for the younger kids at Warm heart and we are delighted by her decision to continue on to university.

Tanqua, in nursing school, and Earn, in her last term in environmental sciences,  are both at Warm Heart, finishing their terms online.  Joy is here for the summer term and is doing research for the biochar program.

We will have three boys in university.  Danai finished his first year in Computer Science at Rajabhat and his brother JJ will start this summer.  Somphong just graduated in Electronics from Metro Vo-tech high school and will continue in their university-level program.

High School

This is a big year for high school, with eight students graduating from 9th grade and all continuing.  Three of the girls will attend vocational high schools in Chiang Mai, studying marketing and hospitality.  The other girls are waiting to see which track they will be accepted in and the boys will attend the vocational-technical program.

Thank you for standing by us as we coach these young ones on their way!

2020 was a year of obstacles to be overcome, but we did succeed in our higher education goals. With your enduring support, we have a total of 21 students studying at high schools and universities.

Graduations

We started out looking forward to five of our young women graduating from vocational colleges and universities. We were able to attend the celebration for the graduation for three of them at the end of February, before the first lockdown. All five formally graduated by June and have found jobs to support themselves while they wait for the pandemic to ease and the economy to slink back.

New Schools

Luckily the school year finished in March, so our four younger graduates from middle school were able to prepare for high school. Two went to our District High School and two got scholarships to go to Vocational college in Chiang Mai, studying to be electricians

Planning for University

Our three high school seniors are applying to university in nursing, teaching, and sports education.

Thanks to you, their dreams are becoming reality.  Together we are nurturing the future leaders of our communities.

Links:

• Higher Education

From being “afraid to cross the busy streets” – according to her friends – to charting a path for herself in tourism, New has had quite a journey since she joined the Warm Heart family 11 years ago, in 2009. 

New was born in a remote village – inaccessible during the summer rainy season – to two subsistence farmers. Her parents had no education themselves but wanted their two daughters to have every opportunity possible; they wanted them to get an education and find careers outside the village. 

With no school within the village, New, when old enough, started studying in a one-room schoolhouse 30 minutes away. The teacher, teaching in his/her native Karen dialect, did the best they could but the children fell behind. And, the only hope they had for an effective education was to learn Thai and attend the primary school in the valley. 

For her betterment, her parents agreed to let her come live at Warm Heart and New started school in the valley. Her parents also asked a relative in the village to come as a house mother for her and two other village children, to make sure they were all well cared for. Over a decade later, there are 40 children who call Warm Heart their home and the house mother is still here ensuring that it remains one.

When New finished high school in Phrao, she had majored in languages – English and French and a bit of Chinese. Having been very shy and lacking in confidence her entire life, New was still unsure of the path she wanted to chart for herself – however, she was learning towards becoming a tour guide. 

Then tragedy struck and her father died after a short illness, thus leaving her mother to tend the crops and care for their farm animals alone. Torn and conflicted, New turned to her Warm Heart family to guide her. Warm Heart came together with key village members and found a way for New to continue on to further her education. A cousin of hers decided that his wife and child could come live and work at the Children’s Home while he went to assist New’s mother. 

New then applied to the state university in Chiang Mai, was accepted, and went on to major in languages and tourism.

As much as she had always been a leader of the younger ones at Warm Heart, she had not been out on her own ever before. At first, the city of Chiang Mai terrified her. But getting out into the world was the challenge she needed to find her confidence and chart a path for herself. 

She built a network of friends who helped her get a range of part-time positions in local restaurants and hotels – and realized that what she deeply wanted was to be a tour guide. 

Then she faced another trial. Scheduled to graduate in June 2020, New was set to start an internship at a large hotel, when COVID-19 struck. Hotels started closing and her internship and job prospects started fading. She found a few days of work as a tour guide intern before that closed as well. Luckily, she had the credits she needed to graduate, but the future looked uncertain.

So, she decided to come back home. She came back to Warm Heart and has been helping us translate content from Thai to English for our volunteers and supporters around the world. She is also teaching English to the Children’s Home students and spending time with the elderly and disabled in our community.

She just received word from a hostel in the city that she can start as soon as they have some guests, but till she starts her next adventure we could not be happier to have her back home.

We were thrilled to be able to tell you that your investment had resulted in four new graduates from vocational-technical colleges. When they arrived at Warm Heart 6-8 years ago, they all had to catch-up with their Thai peers. They came from one-room schoolhouses in remote hill tribe villages. Their Thai was not "Central, Proper Thai" but a Northern dialect, they were behind in reading and math and science. With steady, hard work and afterschool tutors, they graduated from high school and were admitted to vocational colleges - a two-year program aimed at preparing them for careers in the city. 

One studied nutrition and had an internship at a Sizzler restaurant, which buys local, organic vegetables for its menu. She is applying for training programs with chefs in major hotels in Chiang Mai. Two others studied retail marketing. A fourth studied tourism/ hospitality. She interned in various departments of a local hotel and has an initial offer in a training program at a four-star hotel group 

They had just graduated in March. And then the COVID19 virus locked down the city. So, they are adapting and finding work as safely as possible. One is working at a major chain of convenience stores, another in the kitchen of a restaurant turned take-away, a third at a large service station. The fourth has come home to help with projects at Warm Heart and tutor the children while she waits to learn what is opening up. They have learned how to navigate city life and are ready to step up when the world re-opens. 

In the meantime, our college students are back at Warm Heart, studying online to finish the school year. The new school year is expected to start in July and tuitions are due now. 

Thank you for all you have accomplished with us! We still have more to go! 

Take good care and stay well!