Housing for Women leaving the Sex Industry

Greetings from Tamar Center! We had a very special month: Not only are school holidays in Thailand – which all the Tamar children love – but we also celebrated 25 years of Tamar Center on the 4th of October. Amazing! It is hard to believe that Tamar is already 25 years old, and it was very special to see many of the former Tamar women and their families come to visit for the celebrations! We had a very nice evening celebration with many speeches, good music and even better food and on the next morning we had another special brunch for all former Tamar women and staff. This was very informal and a good opportunity to catch up with everything that has happened in the last years. It was a great time of talking, learning from each other and it was very nice to see how Tamar was able to help many women over the years. Sometimes, when we are stuck down in the work and problems it is hard to see the outcomes, but a day of celebration and the testimonies from many former women, remind us, that all the work is worth it! Thank you to all of you for being a part of our history and for making our work possible! If you would like to see the celebration, you can have a look at the Tamar Center Facebook page and on the 5th of October you will find a recording from our celebration!

In the week after the big celebration, we took all the children and women from Tamar Center to Bangkok for an outing. They had all worked very hard for the celebration and with the school holidays starting a week later, it was time for some fun. We went to the Healthy and Happy Bike Lane – a 23,5 km long bike lane around the Airport from Bangkok. Very nice place, you can cycle without stopping around the airport, stop to watch the planes land and take off and enjoy the ride. Many of the older children joined us on the long ride but some of them did not manage it all – they were picked up from the Staff of the Bike Lane when they got tired and driven to the children area – a big bike themed area with a pump track, toys to play and much more. Everybody enjoyed the trip and was very tired at the end – we finished the day at a big mall in Bangkok and everyone stocked up on ice cream and other snacks. The ride back in the big Bus was very quiet, as most people were sleeping!

In our houses, also some things have happened. We purchased some new benches and a sitting area for outside one of the houses and now most nights the women and children are sitting in that outside area, eating together, talking and playing or just enjoying the cool breeze at the end of the street. It is very nice!

The owners of the houses that we rent also did some repair work and some upgrades to some of the houses in the last two months. One bathroom was completely renewed, some water pumps were repaired and restored, some doors repaired and much more. Our team was busy keeping up with the different houses, checking the repairs, talking to the owners and much more. Now, we still have one house, our Nursery, that we need to do some renovation in and then we should be fine for a while – hopefully!

It was also nice that we could use all the beds that we had available in all the houses for the former Tamar women that came to visit us during the 25-year celebrations! It was nice to have them all in the house and they enjoyed staying in their “old homes” together with our current women – that lead to some long talks until the middle of the night and some very tired women during the day! But they enjoyed it and that is the most important!

Thank you for supporting our housing project and giving the women a safe and good place to stay!

For the Tamar Family

Greetings from Tamar Center! Thank you for supporting our housing project. Several things have happened since our latest update and we want to take this opportunity to inform you:

In the last update we wrote that we were negotiating with the owner of the house that is next to our nursery and we are happy to report that we were able to rent this house. It is perfect for us as it is at the end of our street, and the outside area is very nice and has a breeze going through it all the time. Especially at the end of April and beginning of May when temperatures reached the high 40s Celsius, the space in front of the house has become “the spot” to hang out for all our women.

Next to this house we also rented another new house at the beginning of the Tamar Vocational and Life Training to have enough space for all the women that come and joined us for the training. One of our women also brought her two children after the Songkran break to Pattaya with her and they needed some extra space as well.

We were also able to hand one of the houses over to one of our women who wanted her adult son to come and move in with her. She recently started to have contact with him again and he asked her if he could move in with her and his siblings. As we normally do not allow men to stay in the houses of our women, we offered her, that she could take over the rental contract of one of the houses from us, move with her kids and son in there and rent it on her own. She gladly accepted and a couple of weeks ago we all helped her with the move. It is genuinely nice to see when women are able to move out to be on their own again.

In the moment we are running the three-month long Tamar Vocational and Life Training. The women are learning practical skills in their chosen profession – baking, cooking, barista, and hair dressing, receiving individual and group counseling and are learning many practical skills, like how to handle money, budgeting and much more. The training is going very well and soon the women will graduate. At the end of August, we are planning a Barista Course in partnership with a Coffee Organization and when our women participate and pass the test at the end, they will receive a Barista Certificate that will let them work in any Coffee Shop in Thailand, which is amazing. We are on the lookout for other training courses as well. Thank you for your support in helping to give housing to these women. We hope that you are encouraged to see them learning and growing as a result of your generosity!

For the Tamar Family