Esan is Thailand’s most impoverished region. With a population of 21 million people, despite its poverty Esan receives relatively little attention from aid/development or Christian organisations.
One reason that we take displaced children from fractured families is because we are able to care for them over a period of years. Hence we have time to have a protracted plan of development designed for each child.
Beng (20). One of our graduates.
To this end our teenage boys and girls do all the work at the homes including cooking the meals, carrying out our integrated chicken and fish farming projects, cultivating the crops, especially the yearly rice crop, as well as caring for and breeding a herd of Brahmin cows. The kids wash their own clothes, help buy all of the food at the market, assist in carrying out building construction projects etc. This is because we proactively work to develop the level of work-ethic within our kids. We firmly believe that quality and effective young leaders must know how to work hard and to do so with due commitment and accountability. The ministry is doing particularly well and growing. Our young people now run a lot of the work and are being introduced on to our indigenous board of control.
Narm and Dan both aged 17 years.
ESTHER HOUSE: Twenty-two girls live at the home and study at high school. Ten other girls are studying at university while two others are doing theological training
HOME OF A NEW DAWN: Twenty-four boys live at the home and study at high school. Two boys are studying at university with another five have now graduated. One guy is studying at Masters level and another at Ph.D level. Two boys are doing theological training, two are at trade training school and seven are working.
A highlight each year is our New Year’s camp when our big kids aged 20 – 26 years get together with our live-in kids for a blow out end of year camp. A number of our older ones are studying at university or have already graduated. Even at their age we continue to support them as necessary until they have graduated. Then at that point we teach them to begin to financially support the younger ones who are still studying at tertiary level. That is what empowering is all about.
Now in 2009 we have seven of our young people all aged in their 20’s who have come back to help run the homes. They carry out all of the day-to-day duties and are being mentored as leaders at the same time. Also there are others who are studying so that they may have the opportunity to lead other homes or help in organisations both within Thailand and overseas. This is what Empower Asia is all about, getting our young people to take over our work.
At the same time we have other kids here who have offered to move 1500 kilometres south to work amongst young people in our proposed new homes in Songkhla. This is empowerment. See our article on Southern Thailand… http://empower.asia/thefuture/
Above: Some of our big kids. Most are now studying at tertiary level.
If you would like to read stories of some of our kids then go to Changed Lives. http://empower.asia/stories/
In Thailand we operate under the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand which is a foundation registered with the Royal Thai government.
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