The Newsletter of the Anglo-Thai Foundation
October 2004: ATF Expansion

Thanks to the generosity of a number of our supporters, the Anglo-Thai Foundation can, for the first time in its history, look at specific plans for expanding future activities. We are able to consider an increasing numbers of supported children, look at moving into another Province, taking on more capital projects and not least, to start employing an administrator in Esarn.

The Foundation has always emphasised that nobody gets any remuneration for his or her work, and indeed this will always remain so in respect of Trustees, committee members and other helpers.

However, the workload generated is becoming such that it was felt to be the right time to take on an assistant to help Secretary Jean Young and Ajahn Surapong in their work for the Foundation.

As well as taking over the complex administration of some three hundred children scattered around rural Sisaket and Buriram, this appointment will make the task of obtaining translated school reports and letters much easier. We will thus be able to offer a greater feedback of information about the progress of children to their sponsors, which we are sure will lead in the long run to an increase in sponsor numbers.

This will take time to establish, so if you are a sponsor, please be patient.

Link: our new Admin Assistant
It will also enable non- Thai speaking sponsors to write to their children, who are always thrilled to receive messages from those who they know are helping them. We have always tried to keep up with this task, with the aid of a band of volunteer translators up and down the UK. We are eternally grateful for their efforts, but the whole job is getting too complicated unless it is done at source.

The children are always happy to see anybody from the Foundation
who comes to visit them

Jean went out to Bangkok in August to interview applicants and appointed Miss Tippussorn Attavuttisilp, (known as Link) She started working for us on 1st October, and her first job is making preparations for the January grant giving.

This will greatly relieve the burden of administrative work for Trustees, which up to now has had to be done on our arrival in Sisaket.

This in turn will enable us to devote more time to meeting children and looking at prospective projects.

 
While in Thailand , Jean traveled up to Sisaket (accompanied by her trusty translator Tan, without whom we could not function) and paid informal visits to schools to meet some of our students. Many of them are getting to know her, and she now gets greeted as ‘Mama Jean' She declined invitations to join in a game of football, but did do some skipping; and on a more academic note, gave an impromptu English lesson. Could it be that some Thai children will learn to speak English with a Staffordshire accent and go round calling each other ‘Duck'?

She also had meetings with several head teachers who had proposals for projects. One school has desperately poor dining facilities for the children to have their school meal. The teachers and parents are all working hard to try to improve the school environment, and would dearly love a new school canteen, but their budget is limited and they have other pressing priorities.

Another school has an established fish farm that they harvest for school meals: around the farm they grow vegetables, the surplus of which they sell at market to supplement the school meals budget – a good example of typical Esarn self-help. Their problem is that the fish pens are constructed from bamboo, it is rotting and they can't afford to replace it with steel tubing.

 
The present school canteen
A third school has a new and progressive head teacher who would dearly like to open an IT room, with internet connection. As reported in the previous edition, there is dearth of computer equipment in schools in Esarn, and those with internet access are virtually unknown. In addition to the benefit to the pupils, our local Trustee and our new administrator would be able to make use of this facility, which would improve data communication between Esarn and our UK secretarial base.

The Fish Farm project. the children are washing vegetables ready to take to market: the old bamboo pens can be seen in the background

Jean presented details of these projects to the September Trustees meeting, and it was agreed that all projects should be funded by the ATF. Since the meeting a supporter has generously made a donation that will cover the cost of the fish farm project.

While in Esarn Jean also established contact with Sisaket Rotary Club, and was invited to give a presentation of our work to their members. Like Rotary Clubs world wide, they do a huge amount of charitable support, but it is presently confined to Sisaket town. It was agreed that we would meet with them again in January to discuss ways in which they might help us by spreading their work further afield.

As a result of a presentation we gave earlier in the year to the Leek branch of the Soroptomists, we were given a huge bag of soft toys, pens & pencils etc, which Jean took out with her (again by courtesy of Emirates Airlines who gave her the usual generous luggage allowance) and they were distributed to all schools that Jean visited who have children in kindergarten departments . They were gratefully if somewhat shyly received.

The grant giving next year has been fixed for the week commencing 17th January 2005. The numbers of grants to be awarded has been increased to 320

We are always pleased to welcome sponsors to join these trips, as Mr & Mrs Steinman did this year. For logistical reasons we cannot accommodate too many people, and currently all places for 2005 have been taken. In addition to the Grant Giving functions themselves, and meeting with the local Rotary Club, we hope to be able to pay a visit to the local hospital where three of our former students are now qualified nurses.


Some of the village children with toys from
Leek soroptomists
If you look around the rest of the site, , and go to the page entitled ‘Our Children' you will read about a little girl called Kanchana who is blind in one eye, and scarred. Having read about her on the website, somebody wrote in to offer funding to treat her disability, so in January we will also take her, probably to Khon Kaen University Hospital, to have her condition evaluated. Look out for more news about this, and the rest of the trip in our next newsletter.

We also plan to have discussions with people in Surin province to establish an organisational structure with a view to start awarding grants in 2006

In July of this year the Foundation held a one day Thai Festival in Morden Park, Merton.
The event was organized by ATF Chairman Suraphee Simpson, to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude for the tremendous amount of hard work she put in over many months, and also to her son Luiz who was event manager on the day. He worked tirelessly from dawn to well beyond dusk to have everything ready for the day. The saying about carrying out a task you know so well is that ‘you can do it with your eyes shut'. A good example of this is erecting gazebos at nearly midnight!

Classical Thai dancing was one of the Festival attractions

Considering the summer we have had, the fates were kind to us, and apart from a few early morning showers, the day was bright, fine and warm. A good crowd turned out to sample the attractions which included Thai food & drink stalls, craft stalls, Thai music & dancing, Thai boxing and a complete traditional Thai wedding ceremony performed by the monks from the Buddhavihara & Buddhapadipa temples. The monks had their marquee in which they had many visitors, and in the ATF marquee it was good to meet a lot of names to which I can now put faces.


Sampling delicious Thai food was another attraction

(Festival photographs © Kamol Adison)

A lot of effort was put into this event, and many lessons were learned should we decide to repeat the festival in the future. In addition to our own festival, we have had stalls at Songkran in Birmingham and Wimbledon, at the Battersea Food Festival, and also at a new venture, a Thai Festival in Bournemouth. All were quite profitable, and thanks are due to all the helpers who man these stalls.
If you regularly make telephone calls to Thailand (or any other country) the Foundation has an arrangement with 1st4phonecards whereby they give the Foundation a percentage of all cards sold via the ATF website.
These cards can save you a lot of money on international phone calls.
Click on the link button above to take you to our page on the 1st4phonecards website
At checkout enter coupon code 1910WTY1 and click 'Redeem Coupon

Like many organization newsletters, the post of ‘editor' of Sawasdee seems to involve writing all the copy!

I usually manage to spin the paper edition out to three sides, and would welcome contributions from anybody who would like to write an article about any aspect of the Foundation and its work.

You can email copy to me (use this email link) or snailmail it to me at the ATF address on the contact page.

If this is the first time you have read about our work, and would like to know how you can help, please click here to go to our donations page


With your help we can make life much better for kids like these

The editorial staff (me) and the usual distribution staff (Jean) offer their grateful thanks to

Babs Allton for collating and distributing the hard copy of this edition of Sawasdee.

The Foundation is always looking for people to help with our work, particularly as our activities expand.
If you would like to become more involved in our work, please get in touch with us.