Empower, educate, and protect young Thai mothers

Over the years we have had the privilege to help many young mothers get back on their feet and start a new life with their child. Unfortunately it's not always legally possible for a mother to keep her baby and in those cases, we want to help children be placed with a permanent family as fast as possible. There are many wonderful organizations facilitating international adoptions but the long process can often leave children without a family until they are already in elementary school. When we started The Light Center, we asked our local Department of Social Development if we could work together to get children in families domestically. The year-long approval process for domestic adoption is thorough and includes multiple home visits. There are many wonderful Thai families that would love to adopt but simply haven't been informed that it's possible. Thanks to our local government actively finding families, we've seen every orphan placed in a family in less than a year instead of waiting years on the international process. Our job is simply to provide foster care for the children while the government searches for a matching family. Thanks to strategic partnerships like this one, children are being loved by their new families faster.

Late last year we received an emergency foster care case of an infant girl nicknamed "Om." She came to us with cigarette burns on each cheek because her mentally handicapped mother was upset she was crying while her father was out working. She was removed from her home by local authorities, and the plan was to simply send her to a government orphanage for good. However, we offered to provide foster care to Om to give the family a chance to make the home environment safer and for the mother to receive help.

In April we were overjoyed to be able to take her back to her family. Her father had given up smoking, had made the home more child-safe structurally, and the mother had received professional psychiatric help. Om has an older brother who was thrilled to have his little sister return home. We trained the family on how to provide better childcare and are getting positive updates from local nurses who are checking in on the family. Thank you for helping make The Light Center possible. Because of your investment in our work, an entire family has had their life changed.