HELPING THOSE WHO CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES

(From material supplied by FORDEC)


 

FORDEC's Activities

 

The Foundation for Rehabilitation & Development of Children and Family (FORDEC), is a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to helping children, youth, families and the aged who are poor, handicapped, wandering, homeless, addicted to drugs, abused, HIV/AIDS afflicted and just generally living in difficult circumstances. The Foundation provides material assistance for survival and opportunities for physical and intellectual growth to uplift these people’s living conditions. 

 

Dr. Amporn Wathanavongs formed FORDEC on 14 February 1998, St. Valentines Day. This day was chosen to symbolize love. The Foundation aims to realize and extend love and transform it into action to bring about material and spiritual needs to all distressed, and through this action uplift their living conditions, promoting human dignity. The Foundation works under the principle, "Give love and concern to all distressed."  



Dr. Amporn with his charges

 

 

FORDEC helps families with health, housing and occupational assistance to increase their income and to enable them to attain a better standard of living. FORDEC's main concern is to help the families in rural areas who have been affected by the loss of work due to the economic crisis on 1997, and all families are helped regardless of race or religious affiliation.

 

FORDEC is aware that many children in rural areas are suffering from malnutrition. In an effort to eradicate this, FORDEC is supporting a lunch program, which provides nutritious food for children attending day centers and schools. At present, the government helps by providing twenty percent and FORDEC supplements this by a further fifty-five percent.  

 

However, the help from the government is going to be reduced due to the fact that FORDEC support is so visible and so now it needs to raise this extra twenty percent to be able to continue to support the lunch program. Currently 3,700 children in twenty-nine schools, in four rural provinces along the Thai/Cambodian border are benefiting from the lunch program.

 

FORDEC does not just believe in eradicating malnutrition but also in helping the families to help themselves and so it has set up an agriculture project. This project teaches the children how to raise chickens, fish, pigs and ducks and how to grow corn, rice and bananas. The products are then used to supplement the lunch program. This project was started this year and has already helped 3,700 children.  

 

FORDEC's educational and vocational programs support individual families to help their children attend school. Self-esteem and a career are essential keys to a better future and FORDEC has helped 4,500 children with their schooling. FORDEC also wishes in the future to help more young adults get to university and college. To date, it has helped sixteen young adults with university and college studies including one person who is studying at medical school.

 

FORDEC has recently helped rural children by giving them scholarships with the cooperation of the Monarch Lee Gardens Hotel. Many of these children have no shoes and have to walk several kilometers to school. FORDEC intends to provide 20,000 pairs of sandals annually and has so far provided 1000.

 

Many of these very poor and underprivileged children, who live in remote parts of the provinces along the Thai/Cambodian border, have difficulties getting to school. This is largely due to the fact that they often live more than four kilometers from their school, with no shoes, little food and no transport. These children are poor because their families lost land because of forest conservation programs. They also have the added difficulty that there are still land mines in the area because of previous fighting between the two fractions in Cambodia for power. 

 

 

FORDEC is setting up a project to provide bicycles to the children living along the border, who don't live on a bus route. 3,700 bicycles will be sent there, which will enable 7,000 children to get to school easier. When these children have finished school they will return the bikes to the school to enable other kids to use them.

 

FORDEC is also in the process of supporting the community to build a day care center for seventy children in the rural area of Kalasin. At present, the smaller children are cared for in decrepit conditions. FORDEC wishes to build a day care center so that the children can be cared for in a safe and clean environment, five days a week. This building will benefit future generations and enable parents to go to work safe in the knowledge that their children are being properly cared for.

 

FORDEC continues to help those with drug rehabilitation, those affected by HIV/AIDS, the elderly and people with multiple handicaps. FORDEC assisted with a project to build the Hope House, which is a center for those affected by HIV/AIDS and also The House of Love, a home for children with HIV/AIDS. In the Hope House and The House of Love, the patients receive love, care and the moral and spiritual support that they need to gain strength to fight the disease as well as medical care in an unbiased and non-judgmental atmosphere.

 

FORDEC helps people with multiple handicaps by supporting their training and then giving them a real chance by providing them with an initial investment to enable them to help themselves. Last year, FORDEC worked to improve the health of the aged in rural areas by providing physical rehabilitation centers with the necessary equipment and machines for rehabilitation and therapy. This program works in close cooperation with the community, village temple and local health personnel. So far, three centers have been completed serving more than 10,000 people.

 

FORDEC also helps rural communities with community development. FORDEC helps to provide sanitation, road improvement and health facilities such as immunization. FORDEC is keen to help those people in rural areas in all aspects of development to increase their standard of living.

 

In helping the people in rural areas, FORDEC also addresses some of the problems in urban areas. As FORDEC helps improve the standard of living for the people in the rural areas, it takes away the need for them to migrate to urban areas and thereby decreases problems such as overcrowding, unemployment and pollution in the cities.

 

FORDEC's main concern is to provide more sponsorships. At present, it has found sponsors for 220 children but there are many more that would appreciate and benefit immensely from this program.

A sponsorship provides long term help to the child and its family. A child who is on a sponsorship program will be able to receive housing and health improvements and their family will be helped through an occupational investment to help generate an income so that the family can become self-supporting.

 

Vocational training is provided according to capabilities. In addition, a loan can be granted to the family for productive business ventures so that the family can earn more income to improve their living conditions.

 

Sponsorship is also about building a higher self-esteem in the individual, having the knowledge that another individual cares about them. Sponsorship also has immense benefits on the sponsor's side too, learning about the person they are sponsoring and being part of that person's life. The sponsorship program also benefits overseas sponsors by promoting a cultural and international understanding.

 

"From an Old Brother I Offer this Food"

 

Food is among the four basic necessities for survival in our society. Children are the most needy for they are the future of our society. They are the force that will lead our civilization in to the future, and if children are deprived of basic necessities, our society will eventually fail.

 

FORDEC donates time and resources to help develop suitable living conditions for children in rural areas of Thailand, where many suffer from malnutrition and lack of education. One of FORDEC's new programs assists in providing food to over 4,300 children in Thai provinces like Chiang Mai and Nan. The "Lunch Program," as it is called, provides these children with essential nourishment. Hopefully, as a result of this, there will be fewer problems with their health and more time for their education.

 

In order to continue its Lunch Program, FORDEC is requesting the help of anyone with a loving heart and compassion. There are thousands of other children in need of assistance. Any donations are most welcome. For only THB6 per day, you can feed a hungry child. For THB130, a child will be taken care of for one month, THB600 for six months and THB1,200 for one year.

 

The children of Thailand need your assistance to minimize their suffering. If you can help, please contact FORDEC and contribute your donation. You can also find FORDEC’S donation boxes all over Thailand. Remember, even the smallest donations will greatly help reduce the amount of hungry children.

 

Contact Info:

 

FORDEC

1035/3 Srinakarin Road, Suan-Luang

Bangkok 10250 Thailand

Tel: 721-2983-4

Fax: 721-2985

Email: ampornwa@ksc.th.com

PO Box 33, On-Nut

Bangkok 10250 Thailand

Website: www.fordec.org

 


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