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Safe Bathing For Poor Thai
Students
Taking a bath in privacy is a luxury for students at the Blessing Home in
Thailand. Currently home to fifty-five children ages nine through eighteen,
the boarding house struggled to provide food and drinking water to its residents.
Every day they used four to five tanks of water for daily consumption. There
were no extra funds in the meager budget to buy water for baths. Find out
how Operation Blessing Thailand helped the Blessing Home.
Located in the Chiangri Province
of Thailand, Blessing Home is a hostel for hill tribe children who want
to study in the city. Normally parents are responsible for the housing costs
at Blessing Home but many can’t afford the expense. Run by the Lahu
Foundation, the Blessing Home covers these expenses through scholarships.
Half of these children are so poverty-stricken they don’t have travel
funds to go home during their two school breaks every year. Even if they
could go, their parents wouldn’t be able to feed them. Not seeing
their families for long periods of time, the Blessing Home becomes these
children’s adopted family.
In 2001 there was enough food for everyone most of the time, but the
water situation needed help. There was an adequate amount of water for
basic cooking and drinking, but students had to walk almost a mile to
take a bath in an open stream near rice fields. Even though the weather
is moderate most of the year, temperatures in the 40's during the winter
made bathing very uncomfortable. Classmates took turns watching for people
passing by to insure a little privacy. For obvious reasons, this was especially
dangerous for the girls. Their bathing stream passed through the rice
fields and was filled with farmer’s pesticides, causing skin problems
and other health concerns. Something had to be done.
When Operation Blessing learned of the need, they began preparations
to dig a well immediately. In no time at all, the well was dug and a pump
installed! Now two years later students still enjoy taking baths in the
privacy of a true bathroom, and their skin problems have dramatically
decreased as well. Operation Blessing also helped by providing twenty-two
sacks of rice, weighing over twenty pounds apiece!
In a country with over 62.3 million people many more clean water wells
are needed. Plans are underway to dig thirty wells throughout the impoverished
north and northeast regions before the rainy season begins in June. Your
gift of $50 or more can provide many more children and adults with access
to a lifetime supply of clean water.
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