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.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
Help break the cycle of suffering by giving toward Operation Blessing's water wells and cisterns program. A gift of $1,800 can drill a well for villages and supply families with clean drinking water.

 

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