News from the Duang Prateep Foundation

Japanese Ambassador visits Kanchanaburi New Life Project

Last month the Japanese Ambassador, H.E. Mr. Nobutoshi Akao, visited the Duang Prateep Foundation's New Life Project for Girls in Kanchanaburi Province, 170 km West of Bangkok.

The ambassador's visit was to celebrate the purchase of a Toyota mini-bus, playground and educational equipment, books, and equipment to provide an improved electrical supply to the project. The equipment had all been purchased with funds provided by the Embassy of Japan under the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Projects scheme.

Ambassador Akao was welcomed to the Duang Prateep Foundation by Secretary General Prateep Ungsongtham Hata and New Life Project Manager and Deputy Secretary General Prakhong Ungsongtham. The ambassador formally presented the recently purchased equipment, toured the site, planted a commemorative tree, talked to youngsters at the project and joined Ms. Prateep for a television interview during his three hour visit

The New Life Project for Girls presently has nine girls aged between fifteen and twenty-five recovering from addiction problems. There are also twenty-five younger children, aged between five and thirteen, who have been victims of abuse or who have no one to care for them. The older children carry out vocational training programmes and work at the project farm. The younger children attend the local school.

With the new Toyota mini-bus the children will no longer have to arrive at school wet on rainy mornings. The improved electrical supply will make it possible to have a larger fridge at the project and it will also be possible to pump water for use on the farm.

The photo shows Ambassador Akao with Prateep Ungsongtham Hata (right), Prakhong Ungsongtham (left) and children at the project.

There were other important visitors to the Kanchanaburi New Life Project last month:

The vice-president of the Flame of Hope Foundation, Patricia Heim, visited the project, accompanied by her friend Mary Rohrer. The Flame of Hope Foundation is the US registered foundation which raises funds to support the work of the Duang Prateep Foundation, especially the New Life Project for Girls.

Also last month, the chairperson of the Welfare Committee of the Bangkok-based Australian-New Zealand Women's Group, Ms. Alison Stanford, visited the New Life Project for Girls, accompanied by Ms. Prateep Ungsongtham Hata and Australian volunteer Mark Bennis.

Holiday activities

With the Thai schools closed through the month of October, it has been a busy time at the Duang Prateep Foundation. School holidays are a vulnerable time for many slum children. With parents busy working, there is often a lack of parental supervision and the children lack affordable recreation opportunities. It is a time when children can be led astray if they cannot find stimulating and safe activities.

For the second successive year, the Duang Prateep Foundation has been seeking to provide the youngsters with some holiday-time fun. A programme of activities for youngsters has been provided at the DPF, which was regularly attended by between 80 and 100 children. The Nithan Caravan puppet troupe provided entertainment for the children and there were art activities, cooking sessions and games.

Some of the artworks, including a five-metre long collective effort titled ‘Peace’, have been sent to the USA. The Peace painting and other artworks will hopefully be displayed at the UN for International Human Rights Day on the 10^th of December. On that day, International Paint Pals, an organisation which arranges exhibitions of children's art, will receive a 2001 Global Tolerance Award from the UN. In recent years, artists from Klong Toey Slum have contributed to several International Paint Pals exhibitions.

The photo shows children with the 'Peace' painting which has been sent to the USA.

The slum children were also offered computer classes, taught by foundation staff, Four groups were taught with a total of forty youngsters aged between nine and thirteen attending the classes. Some of the older children were also taught how to make a mixture for menthol inhalers, they were also sewing animal motifs on to shirts. The shirts have already proved popular at the DPF shop and the skills which have been learnt earn some extra income for the children.

Last month, 80 youngsters went on a three day, two night camp to Petchburi Province, 150 km from Bangkok. The youngsters aged between fifteen and twenty came from seven slum communities and from two youth groups outside Klong Toey. The purpose of the camp was to improve networking among youth groups and discuss the situation facing slum youths.

Also last month the Aids Control Project took 30 youngsters on another camp to the same venue in Petchburi Province. The participants were mostly lower-secondary pupils at Moo Baan Chumchon Pattana School, next to the Duang Prateep Foundation. The focus of the three day event was on Aids and the media. There were many discussions but also time for games and a swim in the sea.

A separate group of twenty youngsters from the Moo Baan Chumchon Pattana School were taken by Aids Control Project staff to appear on a local television programme, where they talked about their education and perspectives on Aids and sexuality.

The Sponsorship section took sixty children to the top of Bangkok’s highest building, Baiyoke Tower, an outing which was hosted by a local rotary club.

The second half of the academic year has now started, and during October the second half of the sponsorship money for the academic year 2001-02 was distributed. The Sponsorship Section is now administering sponsorship for over two thousand sponsored children.

Teachers at kindergartens and children's centres affiliated to the Duang Prateep Foundation were also busy during the holiday period. They were making preparations for the second half of the school year and sixty teachers also attended a seminar organised by the DPF about curriculums for pre-kindergarten activities in the light of education reform in Thailand.

UK Embassy events

On the 31^st of October the British Embassy Social Club, the Queen Vic, invited ten children aged six and seven to a Halloween Party at the embassy. The children from Klong Toey had a great time trick or treating with children of embassy staff round the residential quarters at the embassy. The children were also served with snacks and drinks at the Queen Vic.

Earlier in the month, a teenage dance group from the Duang Prateep Foundation performed at the UK Embassy at a party for hosted by Mrs. Barnaby Smith, the wife of the ambassador. The seven girls performed one classical Thai dance and changed quickly to perform a modern disco style dance. The party was arranged to raise funds for the Duang Prateep Foundation and the School for the Blind.

The photo shows dancers from the Duang Prateep Foundation with Mrs. Barnaby Smith, the wife of the UK ambassador.

Fire fighter camp

Last month 120 volunteer fire-fighters went on a two day outing to Pattaya. Most of the fire-fighters were from ten Klong Toey communities, with a further twenty fire-fighters from eight other communities. The outing was not a sponsored event, with all participants paying their own costs. The occasion was used to review fire-fighting in Klong Toey and look at the current situation with a view to the future direction of fire-fighting activities. The participants also took part in several practical training activities such as first aid, evacuating from burning buildings and fire-extinguishing. The event was also an opportunity to play several games and to strengthen social contacts.

Conferences and speaking engagements

Last month DPF Secretary General Prateep Ungsongtham Hata was invited to speak at a United Nations Development Control Programme workshop on drug abuse, which was jointly arranged with the United Nations Economic and Social Council for the Asia-Pacific. Ms. Prateep was accompanied by a former addict, who was rehabilitated at the New Life Project and now works at the DPF, he spoke about his experiences with addictive substances and how he was able to escape addiction.

Also last month, Ms. Prateep made two trips to Japan. The first occasion was to speak at the fifty-first anniversary of the inauguration of the Myochikai organisation. The second occasion was to speak at an event held as part of the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations of Waseda University.

Two staff members at the DPF attended a ten-day UNESCO workshop in China last month. They joined eighteen other participants from four Asian countries for in-depth discussions about non-formal education.

Triumph for sponsored student

A seventeen year old sponsored boy, Kritchmontri Thipraphai, has won a scholarship to study computer science and information engineering in a four year programme at Monbukagakusho College of Technology in Japan. Kritchmontri will take up his study programme in Japan after completing his secondary school studies next March. Kritchmontri has had his education sponsored through the Duang Prateep Foundation since secondary level three.

Over the last few years Kritchmontri has won several prizes for maths and science skills in tests for children studying at Bangkok schools. He has also been helping others by volunteering to help younger children with their Thai language studies. Kritchmontri is ambitious to achieve success and later sponsor the education of other disadvantaged children. Kritchmontri’s parents have a small store in Lock 7 of Klong Toey slum. Kritchmontri's father is active in the community as a committee member of the Cooperative for Development Service Ltd, the credit union which was set-up by the Duang Prateep Foundation. Kritchmontri says that much of the success he has achieved is due to the love and support of his parents. It was only two years ago that Kritchmontri was told that the people he thought off as his natural parents, in fact adopted Kritchmontri at the age of three months.

News from Thailand

PAT not likely to appeal Usa case

The Port Authority of Thailand has heeded the advice of the Deputy Transport and Communications Minister and decided not appeal the historic verdict in the civil court, which awarded Usa Rotpongkasem 3.2 million baht for her suffering after the chemical fire at the Bangkok Port in 1991. The payment to Usa will be made this month

Aids drugs to halve in price

The Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) has promised that the price of anti-retroviral Aids drug cocktails will be halved by the end of the year. The GPO is spending Bt24 million on drug-manufacturing machines in a bid to increase production capacity. The GPO's present capacity only covers some 5,000 HIV patients, but capacity will soon increase up to a level where 100,000 patients can be supplied with the medicines. Aids groups have long been calling for government help to make the drugs cheaper and more readily available. It is hoped that the price for the anti-retroviral drugs will fall from the present 5,000 baht to 2,300 baht per person per month. The price reduction will make a big difference to many families, but 2,300 baht per month would still be too much to pay for poor families.

Last month the Communicable Disease Department (CDD) predicted that most of the people who will die of Aids during the next five years will be of working age. The CDD expects about 50,000 of the 1 million people living with Aids will die during the next five years. The CDC estimates that 90% of those people will be aged between 20 and 44. The CDC believes that about 300,000 have already died of Aids in Thailand. The CDC anticipates 30,000 new Aids infections during the next five years, but if the country fails to keep concentrating on prevention measures there will be many more new infections.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration is stepping-up its anti Aids campaign with the distribution of 1 million free condoms to sex-workers and labourers. In addition health volunteers will teach Aids/HIV awareness in city communities and a sex education handbook will be distributed to primary school teachers.

The BMA reported that the economic crisis had led to an increase in Aids infection rates as the Public Health Ministry stopped handling out free condoms and sex workers had little choice when clients demanded unprotected sex. The BMA believes that 75% of HIV infected people got the disease through sex. There are some 136,000 people in Bangkok with Aids, of whom 43% are labourers.

A forum on the ethics and prevention of HIV/Aids was informed last month that Aids sufferers still face discrimination despite a national Aids policy prohibiting all forms of discrimination. HIV testing is carried out without the consent of the individual and HIV-positive people are barred from education and job opportunities. Many hospitals require patients to have an HIV test if they are to have an operation and in some cases patients have been denied an operation after their HIV-positive status was discovered.

Rise in child abuse reported to conference

The UN ESCAP executive-secretary, Kim Hak Su, told a conference last month that the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation is the fastest growing organised criminal industry. The conference was told that in Thailand one in five prostitutes is a child and their numbers jumped 20% from 1998 to 1999. Thailand has several new laws on the book, such as allowing child witnesses to be videotaped instead of sitting in court, but law enforcement remains weak.

Rise in juvenile delinquency

It was reported that the number of young offenders aged between 8-17 had increased from 55,258 in 1995 to 59,960 in 1999. Among those convicted 30-40% were repeat offenders.

Legal experts have called on the government to review the juvenile justice system, as the current structure only serves to push young offenders further into a life of crime. Up until now, juveniles have been punished harshly and deprived of opportunities to correct themselves, they were likely to pick up bad behaviour while in detention. The justice ministry is considering a new approach that would rely on family and community cooperation to help young offenders change their anti-social behaviour.

Army opens camps to drug offenders

The army has started admitting convicted drug offenders to rehabilitation programmes at 25 camps throughout the country. 2,591 prisoners, who have less than a year to serve, are being sent to the camps. The offenders will be at the camps for three months, where they will experience a mixture of military style training, counselling and vocational training.

A Drug Users Rehabilitation Bill is likely to be passed by parliament in the coming months. Under the bill, people arrested for using illicit drugs, will not be prosecuted, but will be sent for treatment and rehabilitation.

Money for unemployed by year end

The government has promised that cash will be set aside for a social security fund for the jobless by the end of this year. Demands for a fund to help the jobless have been ignored for the past five years, but a study on how to implement the fund has been approved by a sub-committee of the Social Security Office.

The news about a fund for the unemployed comes at a time of rising unemployment. More than 55,000 Thai workers, mostly from the electronics sector were laid off in the first seven months of this year. The National Economic and Social Development Board has estimated that as many as 1.7 million people in Thailand are expected to be jobless next year, including some 500,000 new graduates.

Lowest malaria level for at least 50 years

Last month the Communicable Diseases Control Department announced that the number of people infected with malaria nationwide had dropped to 57,695 for the 12 months to July 2001. This was a 27% drop on the previous year. There is, however, concern that the infection rate could increase again, through migrant workers from neighbouring countries spreading malaria.

Thailand 'lacks balanced development'

Thailand has been ranked behind most of its neighbours in terms of its balance between human well-being and a healthy environment according to a new survey by the World Conservation Union. Thailand was ranked 127^th out of 180 countries surveyed. Thailand was placed among more than 140 countries whose ecosystem stress is rated higher than the well being of its people. Thailand is ranked behind all neighbouring countries except Burma.

Thailand’s competitiveness rating, as decided by the World Economic Forum, has slipped three places to 33^rd from 75 countries. Thailand ranked reasonably well in 16^th place in terms of the macro-economic environment. However, Thailand ranked 39^th in technology and 42^nd in public institutions.

Special Feature

The article 'Social justice for the urban poor' was the editorial in the Bangkok Post newspaper of the 6^th of October. The article is produced here with the permission of the Bangkok Post. The article remains the copyright of the Bangkok Post and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission from the Bangkok Post.

Social justice for the urban poor

Bangkok Post 06.10.01

World Habitat Day came and went last Monday and about 3,000 banner-waving campaigners marched along Ratchadamnoen Avenue to commemorate this year's theme of cities without slums.

A worthy goal, but it will take more than placards and fine speeches to ease the plight of the hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers urgently in need of improved water supplies, sanitation, better hygiene, child care, education and more effective health services.

Add to this the worsening shortage of well-paid employment or, often, any employment at all for school leavers and graduates, inadequate training opportunities and the often violent pressure on slum dwellers to move out to make way for property development and there is a compounding of the problems besetting the capital.

Grandiose infrastructure projects, long a favourite of municipal and national governments, are not the answer. Nor are more shopping malls and car parks. Moves to introduce welfare schemes such as the 30-baht health care are.

Over the years, successive administrations have tried to ease the crunch by discouraging the rural-urban drift. These attempts have, by and large, failed mainly because natural urban population increases fuel the rise of large cities in the developing world as much as migration flows. Given the limited success at the national level, the onus is on the city authorities working with non-governmental organisations to accept, and deal with the situation.

The most obvious way to ease population pressure in large cities is by improving the economic

and social conditions of the urban poor because they are often worse off than their rural counterparts and even more deprived when it comes to overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions in inner-city slums. Limited social services and housing seriously impede the efficiency of urban economies and markets while wreaking havoc with the lives and welfare of the majority of urban slum dwellers.

One major cause of the growth of urban slums is that rents and prices for even the simplest accommodation have become prohibitive for the majority of the poor. Efforts have to be directed at improving their productivity and incomes while providing them with low-cost accommodation.

City authorities are primarily oriented towards providing and maintaining basic infrastructure and services. They have minimal involvement in social and economic issues, and have little capacity to deal with them. It is time for an end to this defeatist "hands off" approach by city administrations and for them to get more involved in job creation and community improvement projects.

Helping the poor is a matter of equity and social justice, not merely an act of charity and, in this, the private sector has a large role to play. It is also common sense because it would help energise our capital as a producer, trader and consumer of goods. The cost of inaction will be more giant slums, overburdened civic services, a huge increase, bred out of desperation, in methamphetamine, thinner and heroin addicts which will probably give rise to even more frightening Aids statistics than we are seeing at present, more misery, more crime and burgeoning social unrest.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that by the year 2015, 26 cities in the world are expected to have populations of 10 million or more. These are the official figures. Actual ones could be much higher. In Asia, which has the highest concentration of cities in the world, 20 to 40% of urban populations are classified as poor. There is a crying need for governors, city executives and urban planners to work with the private sector in thinking ahead and playing a pro-active and leading role in developing support systems to help the urban poor and minimise their number.