Feed 1275 slum dwellers for a year in Thailand

Every week we feed 250 families in the local slum areas around Pattaya. We visit the homes of the elderly, sick and disabled bringing rice, food, pampers, milk and other needs such as medicine, clothes and water. Many of our families work as underpaid construction workers or garbage collectors as they have no education and some do not have ID cards. This means that employers can easily exploit them and pay a fraction of what they should be paid. This also means that wen we visit the slums they are not at home. Our centre is open from 6am until 8pm on Fridays so these workers can collect their food themselves.

We have been working with the students in an eco-club at the St. Andrews International School Green Valley to grow food for the families we support. The students grew over 200 plants including tomatoes, basil, chili and eggplant. We then gave these plants to our families who can continue to grow them, providing free food and the freshest produce ever!

With no running water in these poor communities, the fresh drinking water we bring is life saving. An added benefit is that they can recycle the bottles and get money back. The water is donated by One World Water so it is a win- win- win situation!

A huge thanks to everyone who hives so we can go!

Links:

• Hand to Hand Foundation

Thailand has been experiences heavy rains for over the past few months which has caused widespread flooding throughout the country.  Pattaya has very poor drainage systems and this results in many flash floods in the area. Housing that resembles poorly built temporary structures have no chance in being able to withstand these floods. With no existing walls or doors to these structures there is little defense against the elements. The result is that many of the few items they own are damaged and unredeemable. These include things such as bedding and food. Hand to hand has been working with locals to secure more of these items 2nd had to replace the damaged goods and also delivering cooked meals to the affected areas.

All Thai schools have been on holidays for the most of October which means that our scholarship students have free time. It has been so encouraging to see many of the older students coming to our centre to volunteer to pack and distribute rice to poor communities. As one student said; "I am so thankful for the food and schooling I have received, I want to do something to help others. I love to help give out food. I would like to do this for a job in the future."

We continue to serve the elderly and severely disabled children with food, water, pampers and milk formula. With no running water, these families are very thankful for bottles of drinking water. For disabled kiddies who are nasal gastric fed, this drinking water means their formula can be made in a safe and healthy way for them.

With Christmas coming we would like to give all of our families some additional rice and some snacks too. Every little bit helps towards this goal.

Thank you to everyone who gives so we can go. We feed 250 families a week and consumes just over 1 ton of rice per week.

Links:

• Hand to Hand Foundation