By Margaret Leonie Grainger | Vice President Hand to hand Foundation
There seems to be no end to the closing down of more businesses in Pattaya, Thailand which was once a famous tourist town but is now a ghost town! The number of unemployed people grows daily and the opportunities to find work are becoming harder. Families are so desperate that Thailand has now reached the highest number of suicides per capita in Southeast Asia. This dramatic rise is due to the hopelessness people feel with no means to feed their families and they have lost hope for a future.
The Hand to Hand Foundation is employing 22 people in its micro-enterprise projects. Ten people are engaged in making fabric face masks after receiving training and all the materials they need. Workers are paid per mask they complete and these are then given to the poor for free. For the last month, our workers have been making plain masks which have been given to Thai students who are about to return to school. The students have had the opportunity to decorate their own masks to personalise them. (In Thailand mask wearing is still compulsory in some situations.)
We have 6 people in our construction program. These men are building everything from planter pots, stools and over the past month, have been building a chicken pen. These men are mainly construction workers who have no employment.
We have 4 women and 2 men involved in our cooking program. The participants are being trained to cook so that when the economy recovers they will have new skills to reenter the workforce. They are being taught to make both western and Thai dishes. The food they cook is used to feed over 200 people several times per week and also their own families.
In addition to this, there is a small agricultural project where participants are taught to grow food. All the training and resources are provided freely by Hand to Hand and the gardeners sell their produce at the market or to the foundation to provide an income for their families.
Training, equipping and giving a bringing hope to a hopeless situation.
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