You may have wondered where your money actually goes, when you make a donation to Kwah Dao…
If you’ve visited one of our open days, you’ll have seen that we teach an average of 45 underprivileged children every Saturday and Sunday. They are taught English, coached in reading both English and Thai and coached in maths.
During the weekend afternoons, handicrafts are taught to help develop the children’s creativity, games help advance their social skills and movies help them to improve their Thai.
Obviously, the children can’t spend the day at Kwah Dao without food, so in the morning when they arrive, they find trays of breakfast sandwiches waiting for them and our talented cooks prepare a nutritious lunch for them. Thats an average of 180 meals every weekend!
Now you’d probably think that the meals alone eat up a lot of your donated dollars. In fact they are only a small portion of the funding that we need.
The building that we use is rented – the rent needs to be paid annually and we have monthly water, electricity and telephone bills to pay, just as with any other household.
By far the largest expenditure, however, is our scholarship program where we are currently supporting seven university students. The cost of this support amounts to over $3000 each annually.
We don’t only support the children
There are many underprivileged families in Pai, not only immigrants from Myanmar, but also Thai, Lisor, Lahu, Aka, and Hmong families, some of which can barely afford to feed their children. We aim to help these families as much as possible too.
For example: For the last three years Kwah Dao has been supporting a Shan family, who’s daughter, Cartoon, needs regular medical treatment in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a three hour drive from Pai and the family just can’t afford the transport, or the medical costs for Cartoon.
Kwah Dao would like to offer support to similar families, but currently our funding barely covers our day to day costs.
If you would like to support Kwah Dao support our community members, you can make a contribution by visiting our donation page.
Other ways that you can help:
• You can donate second hand articles such as clothes, or games for the children.
We also sell adults’ clothes in Pai, or donate them to the underprivileged.
• Our office shelving is slowly being eaten away by termites.
We lack the funding to purchase new shelves for our educational documents.
• We desperately need desks and chairs for our three classrooms.
• We want to open a library and need both Thai and English books to fill the shelves.
• Sponsor a family, or sponsor a student.
• Tell your friends and family about us.
