Baan Nong Kok School (2018)
Our main objective is to provide aid and assistance to rural schools and
students of very poor families through material and monetary donations whilst
introducing simple self-sufficiency schemes to improve the school’s condition as
well as the lives of the students and their families.
The project begins with a thorough survey of the target school by members of
the group in order to properly assess the school’s current condition. This is
followed by a set of interviews of the principal, teachers and students to find out
what they need and would like to be assisted with. It may be noted that families
in these communities are extremely poor yet would like very much to work with
us in making their school a better place for their children – a perfect example of a
“strong community” that others should learn from.
Having gathered enough information, a meeting is held to share ideas,
understand the problems and discuss what actions to be taken. With limited
funds from our Veggies from the Heart project plus donations from generous
individuals, we carefully decide what needs to be prioritized and draw up a list of
planned contributions. After providing support, we follow up on our donations to
see whether our help has been useful and the improvements that followed.
Depending on our annual budget, we gradually make our donations according to
our available funds, a policy we strictly adhere to whenever we help poor rural
schools in the Issarn region with emphasis on those with very limited government
funding.
Our major contributions are as follows:
1) Initiation of a “student lunch project” which provides the students
sufficient food resources as these schools have very limited annual
government subsidy. Sadly, these small rural schools have been targeted to
close down due to the government’s policy of assimilating smaller schools
to medium-sized schools in order to cut-down on national funding.
However, the families living in these villages are very poor; hence any other
additional expenses including transportation would be too burdensome.
Almost 60% these children, live with their aging grandparents as their
father, mother or both work in the city. Most often, these parents
eventually form their own new families in place of the one’s they left
behind leaving these poor children left uncared for, lacking affection,
guidance and suffer a life of hardship as money is never enough to cover
their daily needs especially food. Understanding their dilemma, we
introduced a long-term initiative so children can have a constant supply of
nutritious food source. Included in the program are organic vegetable
farming, poultry for eggs, catfish and frog breeding as well as mushroom
culture. Any remaining surplus is sold for a profit and used as a running
capital, generating additional income to the school.
2) Presentation of yearly scholarship funds for deserving students to
encourage learning and staying in school; setting up of a computer room
with donations of used computers from generous donors and parents;
contributions of learning materials and setting up of a small library with
donations of books and reading materials as we strongly believe that
reading is a very important aspect of learning and must be encouraged and
practiced. For the past 9 years, during term break, members of LHS perform
teaching activities to these children.
3) Sports is an essential part of school life; it promotes good health and team
building skills. Our contributions included repairing the damaged football
field and basketball court and donations of various sports equipment. After
the major repair, the children are now able to use the facilities safely and
with ease. Aside from this, as sanitation is another important issue, a
proper washing area and new latrines were constructed replacing the worn-
out 30-year old toilets. Moreover, clean drinking water and water for
general use was likewise necessary, hence a digging water project was
initiated together with the installation of new water tanks, water purifiers
and automated dispensers to ensure the school and its students a yearly
supply of clean water.
With every school we support,
we carefully assess and decide what
is urgently needed in order to
ensure that our course of action is
effective and will gain positive
results. Regular follow-ups are
performed to make certain that
whatever donations or contributions
we have made brought significant
improvements not only to the school
and its students but to the entire
community as well. Our support
continues until the school and its
students are able to look after
themselves without our assistance.
For the past 9 years we have
successfully supported several
schools namely: Baan Nong Ta Kaew Provincial School Nakhon Ratchasima, Baan
Nong Sub Tai Provincial School Nakhon Ratchasima, Baan Non Rang Provincial
School Nakhon Ratchasima, Baan Nong Mai Tai Provincial School Nakhon
Ratchasima, Baan Kritsana Provincial School Nakhon Ratchasima, Baan Nong Kok
Provincial School Nakhon Ratchasima and various other schools around the Thai
border at Mae Sot, Tak Province.
Once again, this year, during summer break, members of the Lionheart
Society had the opportunity to perform our Paws for a Cause Project. We visited
Baan Nong Kok Provincial School and Ban Nong Mai Tai Provincial School, both
located in Nakhon Ratchasima to check on the schools and their students’
development after receiving
our help and various
contributions.
Baan Nong Kok
Provincial School (3rd year
of support), has been most
appreciative of our
donation of new water
tanks as this was the
school’s biggest problem,
now clean water for
consumption and general
use is available all year-
through. The installation of
new water purifiers and
automated dispensers were
likewise very useful
providing the students and
teachers with daily supply
of clean drinking water instead of bringing them from home like they used to.
Similarly, the “student lunch project” has proven to be very effective in supplying
nutritious meal resources for the students and their families. Moreover, the
newly installed latrines for the kindergarten section have also been very helpful as
in the past, the small children had to use the regular toilets which were quite
distant and unsafe to go unaccompanied. Moreover, books for young children
and other age-appropriate reading materials were donated.
Similar to previous years, this visit included our regular teaching activities, fun
games, presentation of learning materials, teaching aids and sports equipment as
well as scholarship funds to deserving students. The children were very happy to
see us again and we were equally pleased to see the development of our support
and contributions. As always, we ended the trip by surveying and checking what
the students and school still needed and decided to help with providing the
school with new stainless steel plates to replace the dilapidated aluminium ones,
along with a new slide that meets health and safety requirements.
The Baan Nong Kok school was previously missing divided stainless steel plates, as such, the Lionheart Society donated such plates to the school which will allow students to use them for their school lunch.
The playground equipment that we have decided to donate to the Baan Nong Kok
school have arrived.