Thailand: Return to Paradise

A great welcome from the children

Paediatric nurse Derek Franklin worked with refugees and orphaned children at the Father Ray Foundation in Pattaya, for more than 21 years until 2022. He's now back in England working at a London hospital, but recently went back to Thailand for a visit. He sends this account of his experience there.

There are two things that I noticed when arriving in early April at the Asean Education Centre, located in the Thai resort town of Pattaya. The first is a large framed photograph of the late Father Ray Brennan CSsR, an American Redemptorist priest who spent almost thirty years in the city, founding residential facilities for children who were orphaned, runaways and the neglected and abandoned, as well as education centres for young disabled adults, blind children and deaf toddlers.

They say behind every great man is an even greater woman, and in Father Ray's case it was a local Thai lady, Radchada Chomjinda, known to everyone as Khun Toy, his secretary and PA, and who after more than twenty years since Father Ray died is continuing his legacy, caring for those in need in Pattaya.

Today Khun Toy manages the Human Help Network Thailand, which oversees several projects, including the AEC, Asean Education Centre, and the CPDC, Child Protection & Development Center.

The second thing I noticed when arriving at the AEC, was almost one hundred children, all wearing school uniform, sitting in classrooms and learning. April is the long summer holiday in Thailand, the month when, apart from international schools, all Thai schools, colleges and universities are closed, it is also the hottest month of the year and the time when the Thai New Year Festival of Songkran is celebrated. The children turn up every day, they study and are provided with nutritious meals, and they do so because they are safer at school than at home.

Every student is the child of a migrant worker, mostly working in construction, building hotels, shopping malls and motorways, the majority coming from Cambodia, and while the children may have been born in Thailand, they are not Thai citizens and therefore they have no right to attend local Thai schools. Most live with their families on construction sites, a dangerous place for a young child, so Khun Toy invites them to school every day, even sending transport to pick them up.

Twenty minutes from the centre of Pattaya, and behind high walls, is the CPDC. I can remember this project when it started many years ago in a muddy field, closer to town and with several teenage boys sharing two tents. Today over eighty children live in small houses, in safety, and while the surrounding walls may be high, it is not to keep the children from escaping, but to prevent people entering, people who have no right to be there.

The children arrive with a history of abuse and neglect, a sadness that no child should have to live with, but at the CPDC they make friends, are taken care of by people who really do care, and where they can be children again. They all attend school, and as Thai citizens many have gone on the further education ay local colleges or at universities across the kingdom.

The CPDC is an amazing place, one where you can usually hear the children before you see them, a place where the children take part in the farming, they plant vegetables, feed the fish, collect eggs from the chickens and harvest the mushrooms in the mushroom hut, and they have a safe home for as long as they need it.

I first met Khun Toy in March 2001, when I took six months off from my work as a paediatric nurse at a North London Hospital to volunteer with Father Ray. Originally only planning to volunteer for six months, it was Khun Toy who persuaded Father Ray to offer me a full-time job, which I accepted and I eventually left Thailand after twenty-one and a half years and am now back working as a nurse in North London. We remain friends, and after all these years she is still an inspiration. Over the years many people asked me, how can we tell if a charity is successful? My reply, look at the children, are they smiling, do they look happy? Khun Toy's children are happy.

For more information about the centre visit: www.hhnft.org or email Khun Toy at toy@hhnft.org