By Nicolas de Wergifosse and Kamile Martinkute | International Volunteers at MRICRH
In May, the children returned from their summer holidays, bright eyed and fresh faced, to begin the new school year. Between the Swimming Home shelter and Baan Klang Na, MRICRH currently caters to eight residents. Though this is a decrease in numbers from the year before, it is a positive sign as it shows that more children are living in homes which can support them and/ or have arrived at a point where they no longer need MRICRH’s assistance.
MRICRH approaches the topic of education in a number of different ways. The first and primary aspect of this work is the enrolment of the shelter’s children into the local school. This enables the children to receive a decent standard of education, as well as providing them with the opportunity to interact with children of their own age groups, which encourages personal growth. Given that many of these children come from less well-off backgrounds MRICRH assist the children through the payment of school fees, the provision of regular meals and temporary or permanent accommodation (depending on the individual situation), as well as the provision of equipment such as stationary and uniforms
Every morning, the children prepare a nutritious breakfast for themselves. Once they have finished eating, the volunteers bring them to school, where they stay from eight in the morning to four in the evening, when the volunteers collect them again. After this they are given an hour to change from their uniforms into more casual clothing. The volunteers then provide an hour of basic English to round out the day. On the days where they do not have English lessons, the children engage in swimming lessons.
These lessons cover basic topics, such as numbers and colours, with the aim to provide the children with essential English language skills. The shelter also offers these lessons in varying levels of complexity to members of the general public in return for a small fee to aid in fund raising.
At the Swimming home shelter, the children of MRICRH are given free swimming lessons. For a small fee, these lessons are also offered to children from the local area. This is an essential service as drowning has become one of the leading causes of death in Thailand. In addition to these lessons, many of the centre’s children are entered into National and regional swimming competitions. As a result, the children have medals and awards, which they can then use to promote and further their academic and professional careers
Apart from academic education, MRICRH also provides training for both their adult and child residents on how to how to plant, grow and harvest crops. This training serves a dual purpose. The inhabitants are given the skills and tools they need to become self-sufficient. The Inhabitants also learn marketing skills as the surplus crops are sold to the local people at regular markets. The finance generated from the sale of these products is then used to both fund the centre as well as the purchase of the necessary tools and seeds to continue this project,
Primarily, this project is carried out at the Baan Klang Na adult shelter, where the children go most weekends to participate, however, the swimming home shelter also has a number of fruit trees and a small field in which the project continues to a lesser extent.
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