Train 7,000 Disadvantaged Girls in Rural Thailand

It's hard to believe that we are already in our 3rd month of the new year!  Since our last report we have continued our ongoing "Preparing for Success" workshop, started a new training workshop, and attended various community events.

In the last 3 months we conducted 6 "Preparing for Success" workshops and trained approximately 260 young girls.  Our newest workshop trains young girls on the potential safety risks that surround them on a daily basis and how they can avoid finding themselves in dangerous situations.  So far, we conducted 7 of these workshops and trained over 600 girls.

In January we celebrated Thailand's national "Children's Day" with the Ubon Ratchathani municipality.  At this event we set up an information booth where the children played games and the women had a chance to learn more about who we are and what we do.  It was a tremendous success!  In February, we participated in the Open House event at one of the local technical colleges.  During this event we were able to meet many young women who we hope to further train in Ubon to find safe and stable jobs in their future.

As always, we are so grateful for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more with you in our next Project Report.

From all of us at Goodwill,

Thank You!

On behalf of all the staff and students at Goodwill Group Foundation (both Ubon and Bangkok branches), we would like to thank you for your support and wish you Happy Holidays & Happy New Year.  Over the last two years our Ubon office has worked hard to develop relationships and trust with our community and has seen tremendous results from our workshops. We expect the new year to be just as successful as this past year.

Since our last update we have continued our life path and career workshops in the village schools. Recently, we spent some time discussing changes to the workshop's name, in order to fully encompass the workshop's objectives and content. We decided to change the workshop's name from "Surviving in the Big City" to "Preparing for Success". As a reminder to you, these workshops train young girls on how they can effectively and successfully prepare for their lives after graduating from secondary school. Goodwill believes this workshop fills a critical gap in the teaching system within the village schools because many of the schools do not provide such educational instruction.  Without such training, young girls are left with inadequate understanding on how to prepare for life after secondary school.  Additionally, the young girls are severely limited by their poor family financial situations leading many to feel even more desperate about their future. Because many students desire to move to the big city in order to pursue these post-secondary opportunities, the workshop also covers necessary information required to transition safely from rural to urban areas.  

In the last three months we conducted 18 "Preparing for Success" workshops training over 800 students.  According to our most recent Impact Assessment on this program, we found that girls in Grade 9 (ages 14-15) increased their knowledge by 25% after attending our workshop and girls in Grade 12 (ages 17-18) increased their knowledge by 17%.  The demand for Goodwill’s training workshops continues to increase as more schools and villages hear positive feedback from one another.  

We would like to thank YOU for your generous contributions. We look forward to conducting more activities and achieving even more success in the upcoming year, and that success is not possible without your help!

From all of us at Goodwill,

Thank You!