Train 7,000 Disadvantaged Girls in Rural Thailand

Dear friends and supporters, 

Over the length of this project, you have helped us raise over $105,000 – that’s an amazing result. Thank you! Soon, we will be marking this project as complete and closing down the page, so please don't forget to join our mailing list to stay in touch.  

We set up this project in response to a very clear need:

1. A common solution often proposed to the poverty faced in rural villages across Thailand is to send their children to the city to make money to send home.
2. While the poverty is challenging enough, the male-oriented culture has created an even more unfortunate fate for the women. Often, it is the young female who rescues her family, while men tend to be freer to live their lives.
3. There is always at least one person in every family, who knows intuitively from an early age that she will become responsible for improving the whole family’s life, while the rest of the family lives from her earnings.
4. Inevitably, she will end up in Bangkok, with the weight of her family's expectations upon her - but without the skills to secure anything other than the low paid and dangerous jobs, which no one else will take. 
5. We work with these young girls before they move to the city, and then direct them to our courses aimed at women in Bangkok if and when they migrate.

That need still remains. But, since we began, our training for disadvantaged girls in Ubon Ratchathani in rural Thailand has moved from strength to strength. We are in a better position than ever to meet the needs of these girls.

• We reach thousands of girls each year with life-saving guidance, inspiration, real-life advice from people who have been there, kindness and support.
• We adapt our programs regularly to meet the changing needs of our target group.
• As a result, we are beginning to tackle difficult issues such as self-esteem, social media and instant messaging, as well as our usual topics of career development, self-defense, and moving to the city.
• In just the last few months, we have also launched a version of our innovative new training course, Better Me, for girls in the area.

We will keep working on our mission every day, because there are thousands more girls to reach across the region. We hope you will continue to join us on our journey.

Before we go, we wanted to share with you one last video. All this time you have been supporting our work in Ubon, you have been supporting Nang, our Ubon Office Manager, and her daily activities – going into schools in poor and rural areas and running vital training for girls.

Nang started off as a student with us in Bangkok herself – and she completely turned her life around. From teenage pregnancy, to sex work, to leading empowerment workshops for young girls today – her story is an incredible one.

You can watch Nang’s video here: http://pratthanadee.org/nang/

Thank you so much for your kindness and support. Please feel free to reach out to us directly if you would like to become more involved (staff@pratthanadee.org). We’d love to hear from you.

Finally, from all the team in Thailand, we’d like to wish you very happy holidays and a healthy and successful New Year,

The Pratthanadee Team

Ps. Since you helped us reach our goal, we have set ourselves a new one! If you would like to help us reach even more girls, please visit our new project to make a donation. We would be delighted to have your continued support.

If not, please consider joining our mailing list, so that you can stay in touch with us once we have closed this campaign down: http://pratthanadee.org/join-the-mailing-list/

Links:

• Check out our new website
• Like us on Facebook for loads of pictures