A portrait of boy holding a paper aeroplane at SOS…
I've been reading about the city of Chiang Rai and realising how important the land is to the wealth and prospects of a region. I know that seems obvious, but it is important for understanding migration of people. The capital of Northern Thailand is Chiang Rai province. The province, which borders Myanmar (Burma) and Laos, is one of the poorest parts of Thailand.
- Lisa
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A portrait of boy holding a paper aeroplane at SOS Children's Village Chiang Rai, Thailand.
I've been reading about the city of Chiang Rai and realising how important the land is to the wealth and prospects of a region. I know that seems obvious, but it is important for understanding migration of people. The capital of Northern Thailand is Chiang Rai province. The province, which borders Myanmar (Burma) and Laos, is one of the poorest parts of Thailand.
Traditionally, the people have lived mainly on the cultivation of poppy for the production of opium. Apart from drug-related problems, it causes deforestation, which increases the risk and impact of ecological disasters, such as floods and landslides. It is quite common for people, especially younger people, in this area to try better ways of making a living. This is a report I found about the situation for children from Thailand:
Driven by poverty and malnutrition, scores of children cross the Thai-Burmese border every day. Most of these migrant children have never attended school, since there are only very few schools in the border area of Myanmar (Burma), most of them with fees the poor cannot afford. Therefore these children are forced to earn their living by taking any job they can get. Many of them do not speak the Thai language, so they end up doing menial work in tea parlours, restaurants or hotels. Many children move to the large cities in the South, where they hope to find a better life.
The Thai government has launched a number of projects to help these children but there is still a great need for long-term family-based care.
SOS Children's Village Chiang Rai is located on the main road from Bangkok to the North (highway number one) at a distance of about 12 km from Chiang Rai International Airport. A hospital, a market, schools, a college and a university are all within a radius of about 12 km.
The SOS Children's Village consists of twelve family homes and a community house. There is also an SOS nursery for about 100 children, both from the SOS Children's Village and from the local community. For poor families, especially for single mothers, it is very important to have a place where their children are looked after during the day. Children have a nutritious, hot meal at the nursery every day.
Two of the SOS Children's Village's family homes have been converted into a temporary SOS Social Centre. Children who suffer from malnutrition are admitted to these houses and they are treated there. This programme will be run until it is no longer necessary. Then the two houses will be turned into family homes again.
In 2006, SOS Children's Villages launched its family support in Chiang Rai. These programmes are intended to support families at risk of abandoning their children and to encourage families to stay together.
SOS Children's Villages therefore works with local authorities and other service providers to support families and enable them to take good care of their children. The Chiang Rai family support provides primarily medical and health support. It also aims at improving parents skills to provide for their family.
- Mary
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Mothers from "France", learn how to grow tomatos and vegetables to sell at the market.
This is the story of what has been named "France", but is infact a very poor area outside Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Nearly 200,000 people live in this informal settlement with very little infrastructure. Saddly, as many middle-aged men and women die from HIV/Aids it is mostly children and elder people that live there.
The pictures of the mountains in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal in the coastal region of the Indian Ocean differ greatly from how I often think of Africa. They are lush, green and there is a lot of rain. This is a report on the work SOS has done in this region to help the people who live there make a living for themselves and make a better place for children here is grow up in:
For more than ten years now, an average of 130 children have been living in an SOS Children's Village on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. Taking the village as a starting point, social workers have set up a network of volunteers in "France" in an effort to provide care for the children there as well.
The point of this "SOS family help" is to stabilise families at risk to the point that the children can stay with their parents or relatives and do not end up fending for themselves on the streets. There are many ways of helping and the project leader, Nobuhle Ndawonge sums up the measures as follows:
"It's not about receiving handouts, it's about empowerment, about the families being able to take charge of their lives again".
Nobuhle's working day starts with the "Garden Project" on the edge of the children's village, where there are two large greenhouses. Here, a group of single mothers from "France" learn to grow tomatoes and other vegetables to sell on the market.
The social workers in Nobuhle's team not only show the women how to do simple crafts and skills, they give them hope, strength and confidence in finding a way out of poverty. Here, the mothers experience the feeling of being worth something for the first time in a long while.
Around noon, Nobuhle drives over to "France" to visit other families. There is the hut of the 17-year-old Camilla, who lives here with her little brother. Their mother died of AIDS three years ago, their father made off as soon as he heard the diagnosis. Nobuhle and her colleagues support Camilla by bringing her food, but more importantly with advice and practical help, to keep Camilla and her brother from losing sight of what is most important when faced with the burden of everyday life: finishing school and receiving professional training. While she cooks for her brother and herself, she explains how she wants to become a social worker one day. In a way, she is already a social worker.
Another hut now houses a little cooperative, consisting of a used knitting machine SOS Children's Villages bought together with the people here and the five families that use it to produce sweaters, caps and scarves to secure the livelihood of their 20 children.
The SOS family help currently supports 180 families with 467 children in "France". In 25 of these families, the parents have died, leaving the children to fend for themselves. In total, 42 families are led by the grandmother and 83 families are being taken care of by relatives of the deceased parents.
In 77 families, the parents are still alive but very ill, being cared for by their children. These are just a few figures. But they are figures that we can connect to actual occurrences and individual fates. They help us put faces to the dying and their families. Who has the power of imagination to grasp what lies behind the figures of an HIV/AIDS statistic for all of South Africa? The individuals behind these figures become anonymous numbers in a statistic.
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