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Thai Educational Fund Distribution Day

1) Left to Right: Khun Oot (Staff at OrBorTor), Gene McCain( Trustee and Interim Coordinator), Khun Chainarong Maharae (Chief of OrBorTor), a Student receiving monthly education fund gift, Khun Somsri Tantiphanwadee (Trustee), Parent of Student, Khun Sonanta Kolsamon (Trustee and Interim Coordinator)

CLOWN SHOW by TV stars "Bum and Lucky" who flew down from Bangkok

On February 26th, 2005, we held our second Monthly Thai Educational Fund Distribution Day.
About 1000 people from the Relief Camp and surrounding area who have children in the Educational Program attended the event. The Day’s schedule involved a Clown Troupe from Bangkok, “Bum and Lucky” who put on a performance for the children. It was beautiful to see all the kids laughing aloud. After the Clown Show, snacks and drinks were served.

Then the children started to line up for the monthly distribution of Funds. Children that were registered had already been given a stamped copy of their bank account statement, showing their first deposit. About 600 children had their account already opened and their first deposit recorded. The children had to present this stamped sheet to the OrBorTor office to receive their next gift from us.

It took about two hours to distribute 500 baht to each of the children. Through this process of the kids coming together for these monthly events, we feel the children will better understand and appreciate the experience of receiving these gifts for their education. It was incredible to see almost 600 of the children with their purple Siam Commercial Bank Savings Books.

Gene McCain helping villagers in temporary shelters to assess immediate needs.

One of the things we learned from speaking to many of the children and their families, is that, in spite of the commitments of many countries and International organizations, most of these families have received No Financial Support at all to this day, since the Tsunami, except for our Fund.

This was shocking to us, as we have all seen and read about the hundreds of millions of dollars raised. We, who have helped set up this Thai Children’s Educational Fund, felt that this could be an important method of getting money directly to the children. But we had no idea that there would be so little direct support from the rest of the world.

The 950 children who will all eventually be signed up into our program are probably the worst impacted children and families in all of Thailand. Yet, if these people are not receiving any financial support, one wonders, where’s the money going? To be clear, the Thai Government, The Queen’s Foundation, Unicef, World Vision and other organizations have been doing a lot of relief efforts for food, water, temporary housing and starting some permanent housing. But, why is no financial support getting thru?

A new water tank for clean drinking water is a welcome gift for this village.

In running our program, we will be able to learn and inform others about problems we see in the over all relief efforts.
We are also able to respond to specific needs. After the Day’s event, some of us visited some of the families in the temporary shelters.

One group of shelters had no water tank, so had to carry drinking water half a kilometer to their shelters.
On the spot we gave a gift of 8,000 baht (US$200.) to the village chief. The following day he bought the tank, and it is now built. As of tomorrow, the group of thirty families, will have drinking water. These types of efforts are not part of the Educational Fund, but those of us on the spot can, and do, respond to needs as we see them.

We'll update this news page on a regular basis to keep you informed about the Tsunami Educational Relief Fund efforts and accomplishments.