More Vocational Options through new Building

Hello everyone!!!

Today I would like to share amazing news with you: We have reached our funding goal and our new building is now fully funded – that means we have enough money raised to cover the purchase and renovation. 100.05% of the projected budget has come together! Thank you very much to all of you - you made this possible. We started this journey about a year ago. In February 2021 we started to look in earnest for a building to purchase. We looked at many different houses but never found the right one. The building next door, that we were finally able to purchase in September, was always on the market but out of our price range. But due to the Covid-19 crisis the owner finally dropped the price and we bought it in September. Actually, that was a wonder in itself – as the Land and Transport Office was only open for a couple of days. It was first closed due to Covid restrictions, it opened, we purchased the building and three days later it got flooded during a heavy rainstorm and had to close again!

Since September we have done several renovation projects already:  A new roof was put on the building, all old water pipes and electric cables were removed and all inside walls knocked down. We installed a new septic tank, new water, and drainage pipes and in the last weeks all the walls for the new rooms have been built. Currently they are installing all the cables and pipes for the aircon units and are drilling spaces for all electric cables into the new walls. We also selected and ordered all the tiles – about 600 sqm, selected the bathroom appliances, ordered windows and much more. The goal of the company that we hired to do the renovation work is to have the building finished sometime in the summer and we are planning to open in the early autumn once all the furniture has arrived. It is amazing to see this progress and the daily changes that are happening.

All of this has only been possible through the help of yourself and many others that have helped us raise the total projected budget of 29 million THB! Thank you very much!!! At Tamar, we are still overwhelmed and speechless that we have reached this goal in such a short time.

As we have now reached our fundraising goal, we are closing this project on GlobalGiving and are hoping that all the work stay can stay within budget. Once the building is finished, we will send out another update here to keep you updated and would like to encourage you to find us on Facebook or Instagram so that you can continue to see the progress of the renovations.

Again, sincerely, THANK YOU for your sacrificial giving and helping us to open the Tamar vocational training center this year to offer more bargirls a chance for a new life.

For the Tamar Family

Merry Christmas to everyone!

The Team from Tamar Center would like to wish you all Happy Holidays and a blessed new Year 2022! We are very thankful to you for your support and help throughout this year. Your gifts have made it possible for us to continue our outreaches and help to the bargirls in Pattaya. But let’s have a short look back on the year: 2021 was different from what we hoped and expected, and we all experienced many challenges throughout the year. It does not matter where in the world you where located, there have been many difficulties for us all. Sadly, it looks like, that at least the start of 2022 will be similar.

But in the last year, also many good things have happened, and I want to briefly highlight them for you:

-          Purchase of the new Tamar Building – as of writing this Christmas news the new Building is 95% funded – which is just amazing

- We finished a lot of work projects in the new Building. The new roof and outside area is done, all old walls, electric lines, water pipes, etc. has been removed and the building is ready for the rebuilt.

- On Tuesday the 21st of December we basically approved the renovation quote from our Contractor. There are some details that need to be added to the final contract, but as soon as they are in, we can sign and the complete re-building of our new Building will start! 

- We are looking towards the summer for work to be finished and an opening of the new building around early autumn! Amazing!!!

-          Tamar School – Since the start of online school in Thailand in June, we have set one of our buildings aside and everyday one staff member assists the Tamar children with their online schooling, logging on to the different classes, helping with worksheets, etc. This really helped the mothers out, as many of them struggled with the schoolwork of their children

-          Throughout the year, we continued our food distribution. From May onwards, we were not allowed to distribute to groups and so had to make one on one appointments with the women. In that way, we distributed around 100.000 meals in this year alone

-          Our vocational training was very limited due to the lockdowns and restrictions, but we still were able to train new women for our bakery and were able to keep all the women in our program.

-          Our counseling program was able to go much deeper with the women that are staying with us than they would have been able to normally. Due to the lockdowns, curfews, etc., there was a lot more time for the individual women to deal with deeper traumas from their past.

-          We were also able to do some renovation work in the buildings where our women are staying and also in our Outreach Center in Soi 6 where we replaced all the windows and painted again, ready for more outreaches in the new year.

As you can see, even though it was a challenging year, there have been many good things that have come out of it.  As this year draws to a close, we would like to challenge you to take some time out and reflect on all the good things that happened in 2021. We did that with our team here in Thailand and we were amazed by the extensive list of positive things that happened.

And so, we want to finish this year with wishing you a contemplative Christmas, nice holidays, good health, and rich blessings for the year 2022. We are very grateful here at Tamar for your help and support.

Merry Christmas!

For the Tamar Family

Hello everyone!

 Exciting day today!  Finally, we completed the purchase of the new Tamar Guesthouse and Counseling Center. After our decision to purchase the building, Thailand went into a new round of Covid-19 restrictions including travel restrictions between provinces. For that reason, neither the owner of the building, nor the Chairman of our Board was able to travel.

On Wednesday, the travel restrictions were lifted, so we immediately applied for an appointment with the Land and Transport Office and received one for today. All documents were officially signed and notarized.  We paid for the building and finally we received the ownership documents and the keys! We are very happy that this initial journey is finally over and we now are the proud owners of the building! Yeah!!!

Today, we had a small party to celebrate this milestone with our team.  And then on Monday, we will continue our journey by working with our architect on the final drawings, getting quotes from contractors for the renovation, choosing a company, and starting the renovation process.

 Also, next week, we expect to hire the first contractor to waterproof the roof since the rainy season is coming soon and we want to have this project out of the way before we bid out the rest of the renovations. 

We are also very happy to announce that as of the 1^st of September, we have reached 57% of our funding goal for the whole project.  Thank you again for your support and help in getting us this far and we

 hope that you are as excited with as we are purchasing the building.

The Tamar Family

 Hello everyone!

Greetings from Thailand, today we would like to give you an update about our New Building Project as things have been moving ahead quickly in the last weeks.

In the last year, Thailand’s economy has been devastated by the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, mainly the drop of tourist numbers from around 40 Million to basically nothing.  Hoping for some decline in real-estate prices, we have taken this opportunity to review additional properties besides the one next to our current building that was our favorite.   We reviewed 100s of properties online and physically viewed 6 properties in detail that were within our price range and location requirements.  

The result of our reviewing these properties showed that the “building next door” is still the one best suited to accomplish both our long and short term vision for Tamar Center.   Since the “ball is in our court” in the negotiation process with the owner, the Building Leadership team has recently spent hours in discussions about our next steps.  We have decided to pursue this building and have asked the Board of our Foundation for permission to negotiate a final deal with the owner.    As soon as we receive the permission, we will contact the owner and hope to negotiate a deal within the month of July.

Currently, we have raised 11 Million THB and our plan is to purchase the building in cash with the help of an interest free loan from our foundation. If you would like to see the total budget for this project, please drop us on email and we will sent it to you. Once we have ownership of the building, we will continue our fundraising and start the renovations as the needed money is raised. All incoming funds will be split into renovations and repayment of the loan.  Every donation helps us finish the building and use it for our vocational training and counseling needs for the women and children in Pattaya.

Thank you for your interest in our work here in Pattaya and we hope that you are as encouraged as we are about the new building finally getting realized! As soon as we have finalized our negotiations we will drop you a quick email here.

 Thanks!

Greetings from Pattaya! It is time for an update about the progress that we have made towards the new Tamar Building. Thank you everyone for donating towards this goal and a special “Thank You” to all who donated through the “Little by Little” campaign making your money go the extra mile.

In the last months, we have focused on the needs in the city caused by the different lockdowns, the lack of tourism, and the ramifications produced by them. We concentrated our energies on helping women who were homeless and hungry by distributing thousands of food bags, hot meals, and other needed things. But we never forgot our new building project. It was always there and we kept thinking about how it would have helped us serve these hurting people.  Right now, with thousands of women out of jobs, we could be offering hope and a way out with the new vocational alternatives.  During this crisis, we also, have seen prices for real estate decrease in Pattaya due to the number of buildings that suddenly came on the market. If you drive through Pattaya right now, you will see many buildings for rent or for sale and investors are trying to snap up bargain buildings in hopes of making a profit.

At the beginning of this year, we discussed how we could jumpstart the project again. We decided to contact the owner of the building and to make him a cash offer for the building. Our thoughts were that the owner might be willing to sell it to us now for less money, all cash, since the market is flooded with buildings. The owner was very happy to hear from us, but sadly was not willing to sell the building for the price that we offered.  He even told us that he actually wanted to raise the price from the one that he quoted us last (which was more than the building is worth). Somehow the owner believes that in the middle of the whole economic crisis where this building has been empty for almost seven years and there are many other buildings for sale, that the value of his property would be going up!  It is hard to understand the thinking behind it, but we believe that he just has a number in his head and is not willing to move away from it. As that number is over the market value (Pre-Covid, we had an external company do a value estimation of the building) and the owner rejected our cash offer, we were not able to move forward.

What are the next steps? Currently, we have raised a little over 10 Million THB for the new building and are continuing to fundraise.  What that means is that during the whole Covid-19 time in 2020, we still received roughly 6 Million THB in donations for the new building. We have now decided to start looking for different buildings in the area. There are many buildings for sale and we will try to see if there is one that would meet our requirements and be close to the women we serve in the red-light areas. We are looking to find a place close enough for the women to easily reach us, but also far enough away that the red-light district will not be a temptation/distraction for them.

We are thankful that you are with us in this journey. We are still hopeful to purchase a new building sometime this year. We are sad that we are not further in our progress, but hope that through all the delays, we will find the perfect building for us.

The Tamar Family